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AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 



AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

Their Individualities and Their 
Contributions to American Progress 



BY 
THOMAS FRANCIS l^ORAN, Ph.D. 

Professor of History and Economics 
in Purdue University 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



E\i(o 
.1 

.h?2 



Copyright, 1917 
Bt THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 






OCl -5 1917 



©Gl. A 4 7 38 48 



TO THE 
PARLOR CLUB 

OF 
LAFAYETTE, INDIANA 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I PAGE 

From Washington to Jackson 9 

Washington — John Adams— nJefferson— Madison^ — 
Monroe — John Quincy Adams. *" 

CHAPTER II 

Fbom Jackson to Lincoln 63 

Jackson — Van Buren — William Henry Harrison — / 
Tyler — Polk — Taylor-^Fillmore-^Pierce — Buchanan.' 

CHAPTER III 

From Lincoln to Wilson 99 

Lincoln ^— Johnson — Grant ^ — Hayes — Garfield — 
Arthur ' — Cleveland — Benjamin Harrison — Mc- 
Kinley — Roosevelt — Taft -^ Wilson. 

CHAPTER IV 
The Ethics of the Presidential Campaign . . . .117 



FROM WASHINGTON TO JACKSON 



AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PEOM WASHINGTON TO JACKSON 

The bold, determined, and aggressive person- 
ality of the Progressive candidate for the presi- 
dency of the United States in 1912 has been much 
commented upon in recent years both at home 
and abroad. Whether we agree in our estimates 
of the ability and real worth of Theodore Roose- 
velt or not, we will all admit, I think, that he is 
a man of strong individuality whose positive 
views on a great variety of topics find free, 
forceful, and sometimes even copious expres- 
sion. His vigorous personality has made him 
the subject of much contention. His acts and 
utterances have been warmly commended and 
violently assailed. He has also been frequently 
compared with his predecessors in the presiden- 
tial office, sometimes in commendation, but often 
in disparagement. One writer remarked not 
long since that Mr. Roosevelt lacked in a marked 

degree the essential attributes of the typical 

11 



12 American Presidents 

President of the United States. I wondered at 
the time who this typical President might be. 
Would it be the dignified Washington, the grace- 
ful Pierce, the sympathetic Lincoln, the stub- 
bom Johnson, the intellectual Benjamin Harri- 
son, or the lovable McKinley? Or might it 
possibly be none of these but only an imaginary 
composite character who never in reality oc- 
cupied the presidential chair at all? A quest 
for the typical President would, in all probabil- 
ity, prove fruitless, as far as immediate results 
are concerned, but a study of the personal traits 
and individual characteristics of the twenty- 
seven men who have occupied the presidential 
chair in the last hundred and twenty-eight years 
ought to be an interesting one. In making such 
a study one cannot fail to be impressed with 
the great variety of the personalities and abili- 
ties of the American Presidents. There is no 
monotony in the panorama. 

The first President of the United States has 
always stood as the personification of dignity, 
poise, and sound judgment. He was not as elo- 
quent as Patrick Henry, as scholarly as James 
Madison, or as brilliant as Alexander Hamilton ; 
yet as a useful public man he excelled all three. 



American Presidents 13 

His substantial qualities in statesmanship were 
recognized as early as 1774. He was a member 
of the First Continental Congress which met in 
Philadelphia in September of that year. Pat- 
rick Henry was also a member. Upon his re- 
turn home Henry was asked whom he consid- 
ered the greatest man in the assembly. His 
reply was: *'If you speak of eloquence, Mr. 
Eutledge, of South Carolina, is by far the great- 
est orator ; but if you speak of solid information 
and sound judgment, Col. Washington is un- 
questionably the greatest man on the floor.'* 
This statement represents the view of his con- 
temporaries as well as the judgment of his- 
torians. By his good sense and rare mental 
poise he dominated public affairs in a quiet, all- 
pervasive, and exceedingly effective manner. 

Washington's unusual physical strength and 
impressive personal appearance were a valu- 
able asset to him as surveyor, soldier and states- 
man. Even while young in years he was ma- 
ture in both body and mind. The surveyor of 
seventeen was a sturdy and self-reliant lad. 
The young frontiersman of twenty-one com- 
mended himself to G;overnor Dinwiddle, of Vir- 
ginia, as the proper man to carry the famous 



14 American Presidents 

message of warning to the French after other 
men had failed. **Here is the very man for 
you,'^ said Lord Fairfax to the Governor; 
^^ young, daring, and adventurous, but yet sober- 
minded and responsible, who only lacks oppor- 
tunity to show the stuff that is in him. ' ' Wash- 
ington met every expectation. He carried the 
message from Williamsburg, Virginia, to Fort 
Le Boeuf in northwestern Pennsylvania, and 
placed it in due time in the hands of General 
St. Pierre. He then returned to Virginia with 
the reply of the French commander, having 
travelled 750 miles in the dead of winter through 
unbroken forests and over rivers, rough with 
floating ice. The tact and endurance which he 
displayed on this journey augured well for his 
future achievements. **From that moment,'* 
says Washington Irving, **he was the rising 
hope of Virginia" — and, he might have added, 
of the entire country. 

When, at the age of forty-three, he was chosen 
commander-in-chief of the Continental army 
and appeared before Congress, modestly but un- 
flinchingly, to accept the trust, he must have 
** looked the part.'' ** Mankind," said Senator 
Lodge, **is impressed by externals, and those 



American Presidents 15 

who gazed upon Washington in the streets of 
Philadelphia felt their courage rise and their 
hearts grow strong at the sight of his virile, 
muscular figure as he passed before them on 
horseback, stately, dignified, and self-contained. 
The people looked upon him, and were confi- 
dent that this was a man worthy and able to 
dare and do all things. '' 

Nature had been kind to him. She had en- 
dowed him with great physical strength and a 
rare personal presence. He was six feet two 
inches tall and weighed over two hundred 
pounds. His ordinary shoes were number 
eleven and his military boots two sizes larger. 
His hands were so large that he was obliged 
to have his gloves made to order. He was 
Egyptian in his massiveness. Houdon, the 
sculptor, speaks of the ^* majesty and grandeur 
of Washington's form and features," and 
** every one who met him told of the command- 
ing presence, the noble person, the ineffable 
dignity, and the calm, simple and stately man- 
ners. No man ever left Washington's pres- 
ence without a feeling of reverence and respect 
amounting almost to awe. " ^ 

1 Lodge, George Washington, Volume II, pp. 379-80. 



16 American Presidents 

In his mental as well as in his physical 
make-up Washington was a symmetrical and 
well-developed character. He was so well 
rounded and so nicely balanced that to some he 
seemed commonplace. No greater mistake 
could be made. He was not dramatic, spec- 
tacular or sensational in any sense, but he was 
far removed from mediocrity. His judgment 
was rarely at fault. He was usually very slow 
in coming to a conclusion but when once he had 
done so he maintained his position with a cour- 
age as fine and true as that of Sir Galahad of 
old. He w^as substantial, dependable and cir- 
cumspect. His appeal was to the intellect 
rather than to the emotions. As the ^* great 
silent man" of his time he influenced public 
opinion by means of his example and his writ- 
ings rather than through the medium of the 
spoken word. He was not a speech-maker and 
yet he swayed and moved men. 

Too big and broad for State lines, he became 
the personification of American nationalism. 
Matthew Arnold and Goldwin Smith have called 
Washington an Englishman, but to my mind 
he was a thorough American. He was, in fact, 
one of the first men in the country to lay aside 



American Presidents 17 

colonialism and to grasp the national spirit. 
He saw as clearly as any one and more clearly 
than most men that the salvation of his coun- 
tiy lay in national unity. In working out this 
national unity he turned his face away from 
Europe and towards the New World. He was 
distinctly an American — a different type from 
Lincoln but none the less truly American. 

His spiritual nature was in entire harmony 
with his mental and physical being. He was 
confident, not harrassed by doubts and had no 
tendency towards the sensational in religion. 
He was a vestryman in the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church and the dignified service of the An- 
glican worship with its stately liturgy and beau- 
tiful forms was to him both appealing and satis- 
fying. He was practical rather than mystical 
in his religious conceptions and in this matter, 
as in everything else, had a way of looking facts 
squarely and concretely in the face. 

The reading public has always had a fairly 
adequate and correct comprehension of the offi- 
cial side of Washington's character; but his 
private life and personal traits have, until a 
comparatively recent time, been more or less 
veiled in mystery. *'Gen. Washington,'* ro- 



18 American Presidents 

marked Professor McMaster, '4s known to us, 
and President Washington. But George Wash- 
ington is an unknown man." Many of the im- 
pressions, too, which the public had formed of 
Washington as a man were based upon mistaken 
notions. Mason Weems, of hatchet and cherry 
tree fame, represented him as a faultless and 
insipid prig ; Professor McMaster speaks of his 
**cold heart;'* to Col. Ingersoll he was **a steel 
engraving ; ' ' and to Carlyle, * * a Cromwell with 
the juice squeezed out. ' ' It was his misfortune, 
as Senator Lodge has remarked, to be * lifted 
high up into a lonely greatness, and uncon- 
sciously put outside the range of human sym- 
pathy.'' By means of recent investigations, 
however, the life story of Washington has been 
humanized. The veil which has hitherto con- 
cealed the private man has been, in part at least, 
drawn aside, and it is now seen that Washing- 
ton was **fed by the same food, hurt with the 
same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled 
by the same winter and summer" as other mor- 
tals were. In some respects he was intensely 
human. He had a weakness for gold lace, silk 
stockings, and silver spangles. His liking for 



American Presidents 19 

fine feathers never quite forsook him. He was 
still dancing at sixty-four; he was fond of the 
theater; and his wine cellar at Mount Vernon 
was not usually empty. He liked a good horse 
race and often entered his own animals, placing 
a modest bet on the outcome. While a Virginia 
planter he occasionally went fox hunting on Sun- 
day, and more than once he complained that 
while attending church on the Sabbath morn- 
ing he was compelled to listen to some very 
*4ame discourses. '^ Neither was he immune 
from those plebeian diseases which now harrass 
mankind. He suffered, at different times, from 
measles, smallpox, malaria, and tooth-ache; 
and late in life he solemnly put it on record 
that his false teeth were a misfit. 

He also did some things which would have 
given the good Parson Weems a nervous shock. 
At Kip^s Landing, when the troops were not 
behaving themselves to his liking, he expressed 
himself in language about as stormy and vio- 
lent as the mother tongue is capable of. And 
again at Monmouth, when he found Lee 's army 
retreating, General Scott tells us that he ** swore 
like an angel from heaven,'' — however that may 
be. 



20 American Presidents 

In affairs of the heart he was likewise human. 
While still a school boy, for example, he loved 
to romp with one of the largest girls, and the 
affair became serious forthwith; at the age of 
sixteen he wrote in passionate strains of a cer- 
tain young lady whom he called his * * Low Land 
Beauty;'' and be it said that this **Low Land 
Beauty'' might have been Miss Lucy Grimes or 
Miss Mary Bland or Miss Betsy Fauntleroy, — 
so impartially did the young lover bestow his 
attentions. No one of them could claim a 
monopoly of his favor, and the identity of the 
young lady in question has never been disclosed. 
After retiring from one of his campaigns in the 
Old French War he very readily and willingly 
capitulated at another ^*Fort Necessity," and 
the fair charmer in this case is again rather 
vaguely referred to as **Mrs. Neil." A little 
later, and at this time he was only twenty-four, 
he lost his heart to Mary Philipse, only to be 
rejected in favor of Lieutenant-Colonel Roger 
Morris. During the Revolution Morris was a 
Tory and fled from the country for safety. Let 
us hope, for the sake of poetic justice, that 
Washington had the pleasure of speeding the 
parting guest while he was en route, let us say, 



American Presidents 21 

to Halifax. However tliat may be, the wounds 
which were made by the beauty of Mary 
Philipse upon the heart of the ardent suitor 
were only superficial and two years later we 
find him at the feet of Mrs. Martha Dandridge 
Custis, widow of a wealthy Virginia planter, 
whose demise had occurred only seven short 
moons before. The courtship was, in military 
language, short, sharp, and decisive, and re- 
sulted in an engagement in about three weeks. 
Owing to the stern necessities of the War the 
marriage was deferred a few months, which 
seemed an interminable period to the two per- 
sons most intimately concerned. Washington 
was now but twenty-six years of age, but was, it 
would seem, rich in experience in matters per- 
taining to courtship ; for in addition to the in- 
stances already mentioned there were several 
other maidens of the time who received coy 
glances and side-long looks from this dashing 
young Virginia Cavalier. Taking it all in all, 
it must be admitted, I think, that the ** Father 
of his Country '^ did possess some few traits 
and personal characteristics not ordinarily ex- 
hibited by steel engravings or by Cromwells 
with the juice squeezed out. Washington him- 



22 American Presidents 

self was not deceived in these matters, if the 
world was. **That I have foibles," he said, 
**and perhaps many of them, I shall not deny. 
I should esteem myself, as the world would, 
vain and empty, were I to arrogate perfection. ' ' 

And now after the lapse of more than a cen- 
tury, and with the returns all in, thinking and 
well-informed people are disposed, notwith- 
standing LowelPs flight in the famous ** Com- 
memoration Ode," to rank George Washing- 
ton as the ** first citizen" of the American Re- 
public. 

In making the transition from Washington to 
John Adams, the presidential curve dips 
sharply downward. Adams was a peculiar 
man, strongly individualistic both in appear- 
ance and in character. He has been described 
as being of *' middle height, vigorous, florid, and 
somewhat corpulent, quite like the typical John 
Bull." There was little apparently in his 
Anglican style of architecture to commend him 
to the patriots of the Revoluntionary days, but 
in his talents and disposition there was much. 

Adams was a native of Massachusetts and 
was graduated from Harvard College in 1755 at 
the age of twenty. He was as unlike his pred- 



American Presidents 23 

ecessor in office as a man could well be. There 
can be little in common in any circumstances be- 
tween the Puritan of New England and the 
Cavalier of Virginia. In this case there was 
practically nothing. The whole background of 
their lives was different. Their viewpoints also 
differed in many respects. Washington was a 
surveyor and farmer, while Adams was a school 
teacher and lawyer. Washington was a soldier, 
while Adams came from civil life. Washing- 
ton's school education was limited and he never 
went to college at all; Adams had been well 
educated both in preparatory school and college. 
In religion Washington was orthodox, while 
Adams was inclined to free thinking. Socially, 
Washington was of the aristocracy of the Old 
Dominion, while the Adams family held a middle 
rank in Massachusetts. The names of the 
students of Harvard College at this time were 
arranged in the catalogue in the order of the 
social standing of their parents and the young 
Adams stood fourteenth in a class of twenty- 
four on this basis. In taste, temperament and 
tact, also, they were widely separated. Senator 
Maclay, a contemporary, once remarked of 
Washington, **The President's amiable deport- 



24 American Presidents 

ment smooths and sweetens everything/' 
Adams, on the other hand, quarrelled with al- 
most all of his associates in public life. He 
uttered petty and spiteful things about Wash- 
ington, and the Federalist party was not big 
enough to contain himself and Hamilton at the 
same time. He looked with contempt upon Jef- 
ferson and his whole philosophy of government ; 
he abused Franklin and spoke of his *' extreme 
indolence and dissipation,'' and he peremptorily 
dismissed some of the members of his cabinet 
from office. He was particularly vindictive 
towards his Secretary of State, Timothy Pick- 
ering, whom he characterized as ** envious of 
every superior," * impatient of obscurity," and 
deceptive *^ under the simple appearance of a 
bald head and straight hair. ' ' In most of these 
cases there was, to be sure, provocation enough. 
Hamilton had intrigued against him more than 
once in an underhanded and unpardonable way 
and as for Mr. Pickering he was well-nigh im- 
possible. John T. Morse refers to him as *Hhe 
stiff-backed and opinionated old Puritan, full 
of fight and immutable in the conviction of his 
o'svn righteousness." 
John Adams's was a strangely compounded 



American Presidents 25 

character. One of his biographers speaks of 
him as the '^ blunt and irascible old John 
Adams." He was all of this and a good deal 
more. Combined with statesmanship of the 
highest order and an unsurpassed personal in- 
tegrity we find the most glaring and even ridicul- 
ous defects of character. He was vain and con- 
ceited to a most absurd degree — a fact which 
he was shrewd enough to recognize and honest 
enough to admit. ** Vanity, I am sensible/' he 
said, **is my cardinal vice and cardinal folly.'' 
Intimately associated with his vanity was his 
jealousy; and strangely enough he was jealous 
of Washington most of all. In a recurrent 
mood of churlishness he exclaimed; ** Would 
Washington ever have been commander of the 
Revolutionary Army or President of the United 
States if he had not married the rich widow of 
Mr. Custis!" Again in speaking of the battle 
of Saratoga he said he was truly grateful ^ * that 
the glory of turning the tide of arms" was *^not 
immediately due to the Commander-in-Chief. 
... If it had, idolatry and adulation would 
have been unbounded." When Washington 
was the central figure of interest at the in- 
auguration of Adams, the latter was consumed 



26 American Presidents 

with jealousy and again let fall some foolish 
and childish expressions ; and in the early morn- 
ing of March 4, 1801, he drove quietly out of 
the city of Washington in order that he might 
not be compelled to witness the triumph of 
Jefferson, his successful adversary, and to ex- 
tend to him the customary greeting. 

However, in spite of the fact that Adams was 
at times impetuous, hot-headed, vain, conceited, 
sensitive, dogmatic, combative, and opinionated, 
he was at the same time a true patriot and a 
statesman of high order. The storms of his 
passion, though sometimes violent, were not of 
long duration, and never served to obscure his 
vision for any considerable length of time. His 
indignation, too, was usually a righteous one. 
He was energetic, sensible, and practical, and 
so methodical in his business affairs that 
Franklin seemed to him to be lazy on account 
of the latter 's apparent lack of all method. In 
speech he was direct, frank, and refreshingly 
outspoken. Never ingenuous, always clear and 
incisive in his utterances, there was no mistak- 
ing his attitude. There was no Machiavellian- 
ism, no trimming, no playing to the galleries, 
and no attempt at carrying water on both 



American Presidents 27 

shoulders. His writings were equally crisp, 
pungent, and forceful. There was much truth 
in his honest commentary upon the religion of 
his day. *^ Where," said he, **do we find a 
precept in the gospel requiring ecclesiastical 
synods, convocations, councils, decrees, creeds, 
confessions, oaths, subscriptions, and whole 
cart-loads of other trumpery that we find reli- 
gion encumbered with in these days?'' 

In politics he was equally honest and direct, 
and was moreover usually correct in his atti- 
tude, as subsequent events have shown. As a 
foreign minister he was dignified, industrious 
and effective. As a member of the Continental 
Congress he was a hard-fisted, rough-and-ready 
fighter for what seemed to him to be right. 

As a lawyer he was equally courageous. In 
1770 he was asked to defend Captain Preston 
who had charge of the British soldiers in the 
so-called Boston Massacre. With a keen sense 
of equity and a high sense of professional duty 
he accepted the task because he felt that in an 
Anglo-Saxon court of justice every man should 
have a fair and an impartial trial with the 
benefit of counsel for his defense. He under- 
took the defense and secured the acquittal of 



28 American Presidents 

Preston, although he well knew the popular 
clamor which his course would arouse. He 
never wavered in his view of the moral aspects 
of this engagement. A few years later he said : 
^'It was one of the most gallant, manly, and 
disinterested actions of my whole life, and one 
of the best pieces of service I ever rendered to 
my country." Charles Francis Adams con- 
curred in this view when he said that he re- 
garded the participation in this trial **as con- 
stituting one of the four great moral trials and 
triumphs marking his grandfather's career." 

When the Declaration of Independence was 
under discussion in Congress Adams was the 
foremost figure on the floor. Jefferson in grat- 
itude and admiration called him the *^ Colossus 
of that debate," and Stockton saw in him the 
^* Atlas of Independence." He did strike tell- 
ing blows and did it, for the most part, uncon- 
sciously. As John T. Morse has remarked: 
^*His intense earnestness, his familiarity with 
every possible argument, compelled him to be 
magnificently eloquent. ' ' 

The principal event of his administration was 
the trouble with France, popularly known as the 
X. Y. Z. Affair. In this matter also he proved 



American Presidents 29 

liimself to be a courageous, patriotic, and far- 
sighted man. He represented the spirit of the 
nation and of the times when he wrote, after 
the shameful treatment of the American en- 
voys in France, *'I will never send another 
Minister to France without assurance that he 
will be received, respected, and honored, as the 
representative of a great, free, independent, and 
powerful nation.'' Fifteen years later, still 
convinced that his attitude towards France in 
this instance was the correct one, he wrote to a 
friend that he wished no other inscription upon 
his tombstone than this: **Here lies John 
Adams who took upon himself the responsibility 
of peace with France in the year 1800. '' Those 
best competent to judge now agree that Presi- 
dent Adams * ^ acted boldly, honestly, a^d wisely, 
and for the welfare of the country in a very 
critical period.'' 

It is both interesting and pleasant to note 
that in the evening of his life the rancor and 
asperity of the more active days had been 
greatly softened. He and Jefferson, both in 
retirement, were again on the best of terms. 
At the age of ninety-one, when the mists began 
to gather and Adams knew that his end was 



30 American Presidents 

near, he remarked in quiet resignation to those 
about him: *' Thomas Jefferson still lives.'' 
He did not know that Jefferson had passed 
away a few hours before. Strangely enough, 
Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826 
— the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of 
Independence. * ' The two aged men, ' ' says Col. 
Higginson, *^ floated, like two ships becalmed at 
nightfall, that drift together into port and cast 
anchor side by side.'' 

In Thomas Jefferson a far abler man than 
his predecessor came to the presidential office. 
Jefferson must be accounted, I think, one of the 
six greatest men in the history of the public 
life of the United States. He was a well de- 
veloped, well rounded, and symmetrical char- 
acter. He showed a marked ability, not in one 
special line, but in several different and widely 
separated directions. No other American, with 
the exception of the many-sided Franklin, gave 
evidence of such versatility. He was a success- 
ful diplomat, a fairly strong executive, a leader 
in educational affairs, a close student of science, 
literature, and religion, an originator and 
promoter of improved scientific methods in 
agriculture, and the most adroit and successful 



American Presidents 31 

political leader that the United States has yet 
produced. In addition to this he was a good 
mathematician, a ready and forceful writer, and 
a violinist of no mean order. 

Thomas Jefferson was descended from a sub- 
stantial Welsh family which had settled in Vir- 
ginia before the Mayflower brought the Pilgrim 
Fathers to New England. He was the third 
child in a family of ten. His father was Peter 
Jefferson, a man of superb physique and vigor- 
ous mentality. The Jeffersons were well-to-do 
and lived on a farm of 1900 acres tilled by 30 
slaves. The young Thomas was graduated in 
due time from William and Mary College; he 
then studied law and devoted himself success- 
fully to farming and to the practice of his pro- 
fesssion until called into public life. At the 
age of 29, he married Martha, the daughter of 
John Wayles, a lawyer who enjoyed an exten- 
sive and lucrative practice at the Williamsburg 
bar. A year later Wayles died and left his 
daughter 4000 acres of land and 135 slaves. 
The finances of the Jefferson family were now 
in a very prosperous condition, as the landed 
estate, even before this inheritance was ob- 
tained, yielded an income of about $2,000 per 



32 American Presidents 

year. In addition to this, Jefferson's fees from 
his law practice amounted to about $3,000 — thus 
making a very comfortable income for a family 
in Virginia in those days. Although never a 
very thrifty business manager, Jefferson soon 
became one of the leading men of the State. 
His family, however, was not admitted to the 
exclusive social set of the Old Dominion until 
after he had arisen to fame. Although we hear 
a great deal at a later time of the brilliant social 
life at Mount Vernon, Monticello and Mont- 
pelier, it is nevertheless true, that neither the 
Washington, Jefferson, or Madison family was 
a member of the select social coterie of Vir- 
ginia families until after their chief represen- 
tatives had arisen to high office. 

In temperament Jefferson was a striking con- 
trast to John Adams. He was more human and 
normal. He was also more conciliatory and but 
little inclined to nurse his hatred for other men. 
He did have at one time a very profound dis- 
like for **Monocrats," New England clergymen, 
and Federal judges but was not inclined, as 
Adams was, to make unseemly exhibitions of his 
antipathy. Mark Twain once remarked, **If a 
man is a pessimist before he is forty-eight he 



American Presidents 83 

knows too much. If he is an optimist after he 
is forty-eight he knows too little.'' Jefferson 
ran counter to this rule and presented *'the un- 
usual spectacle of one who grew more optimistic 
with increasing years. ' ' 

In personal appearance Jefferson was rather 
impressive but by no means a handsome man. 
He was six feet two and one half inches tall and 
muscular as well. When he entered college at 
seventeen he was described as **tall, raw-boned, 
freckled, and sandy-haired, with large feet and 
hands, thick wrists, and prominent cheek bones 
and chin. ' ' His comrades described him as * * a 
fresh, healthy-looking youth, very erect, agile, 
and strong, with something of rusticity in his 
air and demeanor.'' In early manhood, and 
more particularly in later life, he improved very 
markedly in personal appearance, although, un- 
like Washington, he was never very fastidious 
about his clothing. He often shocked European 
ministers, and apparently took great delight in 
doing so, by appearing in his tattered dressing 
gown and with his slippers down at the heel. 

Although the accounts which have come down 
to us regarding the so-called '* Jeffersonian sim- 
plicity" have, no doubt, been somewhat exag- 



34 American Presidents 

gerated, it is true that Jefferson cared little for 
ceremony, either in public or private life, and 
this fact commended him strongly to the masses 
of the people. John Fiske has told us that * * the 
American people took Jefferson into their 
hearts as they have never taken any other 
statesman until Lincoln in these latter days.'' 
While Andrew Jackson might well be classed 
with Jefferson and Lincoln as a popular idol, it 
is undoubtedly true that Jefferson had a hold 
upon the affections of the people never excelled 
by any other public man in the United States. 
When he was elected President the bells rang 
and the cannons boomed and pandemonium 
reigned supreme. There w^as jubilation in 
every part of the United States except in some 
sections of New England; and even there his 
praises were not entirely unsung, as the news- 
papers of the time tell us that the denizens of 
the Hartford frog ponds croaked in unison for 
*'the man of the people, the man of the peo- 
ple." 

Jefferson's sway was a gentle one. He 
wielded no big stick. He was a leader, not a 
driver of men. When President, if he wished 
an Act passed by Congress, he would perhaps 



American Presidents 35 

express himself to that effect in casual conversa- 
tion with some member of that body. There 
might be no request, no argument, and no agree- 
ment ; but in all probability the legislator would 
hurry off to Congress and quietly make kno\\ai 
the wishes of the chief executive, and forthwith 
the thing was done. 

The principles and the character of Jeffer- 
son have been the subject of violent and, in some 
cases, of needless controversy. It seems to me 
to be regrettable that so many of the biograph- 
ers of Hamilton and Jefferson should think it 
necessary to pull down the one in order to exalt 
the other. It should be accounted a very for- 
tunate circumstance that two such men as 
Hamilton and Jefferson lived in the formative 
period of the Republic. They represented, it 
is true, opposite poles of political thought, al- 
ways opposing and never pulling in the same 
direction. While members of Washington's 
cabinet, they faced each other, as Jefferson said, 
**like two fighting cocks in a pit.'' Each, how- 
ever, was a valuable corrective upon the other ; 
and each supplemented the labors of his adver- 
sary. Hamilton was Anglican, and Jefferson 
Latin in his sympathies. Hamilton was an 



36 American Presidents 

aristocrat and exalted the so-called '* upper 
classes ; ' ' Jefferson was a democrat and had an 
abiding faith in the masses. Hamilton was a 
liberal constructionist and a centralizer of 
power, while Jefferson was a decentralizer and 
a strict constructionist. Hamilton was a na- 
tionalist and Jefferson an ardent advocate of 
** states rights." In the course of events 
neither had his way to the exclusion of the 
other, but the line of development of the govern- 
ment has been, in a general way, the resultant 
between these two powerful forces. 

Jefferson's public service was unselfish and 
free from any mercenary tinge. When he en- 
tered public life as a young man he made a 
resolution ** never to engage, while in public 
office, in any kind of enterprise, nor to wear 
any other character than that of a farmer." 
He kept the faith. In fact he neglected his 
prudential affairs to such an extent that when 
he retired from the presidency on the 4th of 
March, 1809, after an almost continuous public 
service of forty-four years, he feared that his 
creditors might not permit him to leave the 
Capital without arrest. Unlike Washington, 
he was not thrifty in business affairs. He was 



American Presidents 37 

also generous and accommodating to a fault. 
Even late in life, after he had weathered many- 
financial storms, he indorsed a $20,000 note for 
a friend and was compelled to pay it ; yet with 
all of his embarrassments the *^Sage of Mon- 
ticello" wielded, from his rustic retreat, a 
mildly despotic sway over the Kepublican party 
in particular and the whole people in general. 
There he lies buried, and the shaft over his 
grave bears an inscription written by Jefferson 
himself: **Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, 
author of the Declaration of American Inde- 
pendence, of the Statute of Virginia for Ee- 
ligious Freedom, and Father of the University 
of Virginia.'' 

Although Jefferson retired from public life 
in 1809, he and his principles dominated the 
government for sixteen years longer. Madison 
and Monroe, whom the newspapers of the time 
facetiously called James the First and James 
the Second, were his loyal personal and political 
friends and when in need of advice, they in- 
variably consulted the ** Oracle of Monticello. ' ' 

James Madison, another member of a sub- 
stantial Virginia family and an intimate per- 
sonal and political friend of Thomas Jefferson, 



38 American Presidents 

succeeded the latter in the presidential office in 
1809. Frail in body but powerful in mind, he 
had served his State and Nation well before 
becoming Secretary of State in the Jefferson 
administration. He was graduated at 21 from 
Princeton University — then the College of New 
Jersey — in 1772 and had returned to his Alma 
Mater for an additional year of work in He- 
brew. He was at this time of a distinctly re- 
ligious and philosophical turn of mind and it is 
probable that he seriously considered the minis- 
try as his life work. If so, he was soon di- 
verted and applied himself industriously to the 
study of law. He never wholly lost his inter- 
est in religious matters, however, and always 
set his face firmly against that bigotry and in- 
tolerance in religion which were all too preval- 
ent in Virginia in his time. 

After having had at least one unsuccessful 
love affair, this prim little man who always ap- 
peared prematurely old, was married at the age 
of 43 to Mrs. Dolly Payne Todd, a beautiful and 
vivacious widow of 26. The name of '* Dolly 
Madison'* is well known in the social annals 
of the White House. She was apparently a 
woman of ability, grace and rare charm. She 



American Presidents 39 

exercised a tactful social leadership in Wash- 
ington and her ** extraordinary beauty '^ and 
**rare accomplishments'' are frequently re- 
ferred to by the writers of the time. About the 
time of his marriage, Madison established his 
beautiful country home, * * Montpelier, " and 
there and in Washington, the home life of the 
Madisons was an ideal one for more than 40 
years. 

Madison, like Jefferson, was destined to give 
his best efforts to the public service rather than 
to the practice of law. This service was sound 
and substantial rather than brilliant or pic- 
turesque. It was an eminently constructive 
service. As a matter of fact, we may look upon 
Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, 
Franklin and John Marshall as the six vital men 
in the formative period of the Republic. They 
were the founders of the American Union. In 
this group, Madison was *Hhe modest scholar 
and the profound thinker." ** Unlike his 
friend Jefferson, who could hardly speak in 
public, Madison was one of the most formidable 
parliamentary debaters that ever lived. With- 
out a particle of eloquence or what is called per- 
sonal magnetism, with a dry style and a mild. 



40 American Presidents 

unimpassioned delivery, he would nevertheless 
have been a fair match for Charles Fox or the 
younger Pitt. His vast knowledge was always 
at command, his ideas were always clear 
and his grasp of the situation perfect and al- 
though he was so modest that the color came 
and went upon his cheeks as upon a young girPs, 
he was never flurried or thrown off his guard. 
He represented pure intelligence, which is 
doubtless one reason why his popular fame has 
not been equal to his merit. There is noth- 
ing especially picturesque about pure intel- 
ligence, but it is a great power nevertheless.'' ^ 
Madison will be remembered as a scholar 
rather than as an executive. No man of his time 
prepared himself so thoroughly and so consci- 
entiously for a public career. While a student 
at Princeton, although frail in body, he gave 
himself unreservedly to his task, and one of his 
biographers tells us that he succeeded in carry- 
ing the studies of the junior and senior classes 
in a single year. In his knowledge of history, 
political science, and constitutional law, he was 
without a peer among the men of his day; and 
no one of them, with the single exception of 

1 John Fiake, Essays, Volume I, pp. 204-5. 



America^ Presidents 41 

Hamilton, deserves to be mentioned with him in 
this respect. As a thinker he was both pro- 
found and constructive, and is seen at his best 
in the Constitutional Convention. He was the 
most useful man in that illustrious body, and 
has been deservedly called the ** Father of the 
Constitution.'' 

In addition to taking a leading part in the con- 
structive work of the Constitutional Convention, 
Madison became the historiographer of that 
body. He felt that the convention was a nota- 
ble body of men and was destined to do a work 
of unusual importance. He had also encoun- 
tered great difficulty in ascertaining the funda- 
mental facts about federal government, ancient 
and modern. He accordingly made up his mind 
to take copious notes on the proceedings and de- 
bates of the Convention and thus preserve for 
posterity a faithful record of the acts and senti- 
ments of that great body. 

He preempted a front seat in the convention 
hall and according to his own testimony was 
present every day and almost every hour while 
the Convention was in session. He took rapid 
notes, making use of a system of shorthand of 
his own invention, and often sat up far into the 



42 Anierican Presidents 

night making a clean copy of his manuscript. 
These papers, usually called Madison's Journal, 
are the most important and the only complete 
source of information in regard to the making 
of the Constitution of the United States. In- 
asmuch as certain parts of the contents of this 
Journal were not particularly complimentary to 
individual members of the Convention, Madison 
decided that it should not be published while any 
of the members of that body were living. 
Strangely enough, Madison, himself, though not 
the youngest, was the last of that memorable 
body of men to pass away. He died at Mont- 
pelier in 1836 at the age of 85 and the Journal 
was published soon after by the government 
of the United States. 

In political information and in ethical ideals 
his standards were equally high. On one occa- 
sion, when a candidate for the Virginia legis- 
lature, he came to the conclusion, as he said, 
that more chaste methods of electioneering 
should be resorted to. He therefore refused to 
make a personal canvass or to purchase drink- 
ables to assuage the election thirst. This start- 
ling and intolerable innovation was promptly 
rebuked by his decisive defeat. 



American Presidents 43 

In debate Madison was quiet and conciliatory 
bnt yet effective. He never addressed any audi- 
ence, large or small, friendly or unfriendly, 
without fear and trembling. He was described 
as ^^ modest, quiet, and reserved in manner, 
small in stature, neat and refined, courteous and 
amiable.'^ In temperament he was quite un- 
like Gouverneur Morris, who said that he never 
experienced the slightest nervousness or con- 
cern when facing any audience whatever. He 
also differed from his old companion in arms, 
James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who appar- 
ently took a rare delight in smashing down the 
defenses of his adversary in debate with his 
sledge-hannner blows. He also differed from 
Hamilton, whose arguments were of the over- 
mastering, dominating, and compelling kind. 
And yet in some instances he was more effect- 
ive than any of his three great colleagues. 
There is an old adage which says : * ' Mediocrity 
which forbears will accomplish more than a 
genius which irritates.'' Madison was far 
above mediocrity and knew how and when to 
forbear. 

As an executive, however, Madison does not 
shine so brilliantly. The hand that wields the 



44 American Presidents 

pen with effect is not always the best fitted to 
grasp the hehn. The temperament of the clois- 
ter recoils at sight of the rough-and-tumble 
methods of party strife. Madison was too sen- 
sitive and deferential, not positive and decisive 
enough, to make an efficient executive. As a 
result, he was pushed aside by men more de- 
termined than himself. The one great event of 
his administration was the War of 1812, and 
Madison, as a man of peace, held out against 
this contest as long as he could. He was finally 
compelled to yield, much against his better judg- 
ment, by Clay, Calhoun, and the other **War 
Hawks" of the time. Great Britain richly de- 
served a declaration of war — and France, too, 
for that matter — ^but the wise and conservative 
opinion in the United States in 1812 was in 
favor of a pacific policy with further attempts 
at arbitration. If James Madison had had the 
disposition of a Grover Cleveland the War of 
1812 would probably never have taken place. 

James Monroe, a member of another substan- 
tial Virginia family, succeeded to the presidency 
in 1817. He was a native of Westmoreland 
county and was descended from a Scotch Cav- 
alier family which came to Virginia about 1650. 



American Presidents 45 

His particular locality was rich in famous men 
and came to be known as **The Athens of Vir- 
ginia." It was the home of Washington and 
Madison as well as of Richard Henry Lee and 
of his famous cousin, ** Light Horse Harry'' 
Lee, the father of Robert E. Lee, Confederate 
commander in the Civil War. The old home of 
the Marshall family was also in the same lo- 
cality. 

As a stripling, James Monroe entered William 
and Mary College, said to have been at that 
time the richest institution of learning in North 
America. It had an annual income of $20,000. 
He could not have remained in college very 
long, however, as at the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution **two tall and gallant youths'' cast their 
books aside and fought valiantly for the inde- 
pendence of the colonies. One of these youths 
was James Monroe and the other, his classmate, 
John Marshall. Monroe was 18 years of age 
when he entered the service and Marshall 
about 20. 

Monroe was always an intimate personal 
friend of Thomas Jefferson and this fact was a 
great assistance to him in his political advance- 
ment. He was a lawyer but did not seem to 



46 American Presidents 

have any great interest in his profession. Pub- 
lic life attracted him. In fact he gave so much 
time to the public service that he had little op- 
portunity for the serious or consecutive practice 
of law. 

Monroe was seven years younger than Madi- 
son and unlike him in almost every respect. He 
was six feet tall, broad, square-shouldered and 
impressive in personal appearance. He was a 
man of rugged physique, raw-boned and by no 
means handsome. He was, however, a man of 
great physical strength and superb endurance. 
At one time during the War of 1812, Monroe had 
charge for a short period of three cabinet de- 
partments — State, Treasury and War — and for 
a period of ten days and nights he did not go to 
bed or remove his clothing and ' * was in the sad- 
dle the greater part of the time.'' 

Although there was a quiet dignity about his 
bearing, Monroe did not impress his contempo- 
raries as a particularly cultured man. He was 
awkward and diffident and without grace either 
in manner or appearance. In his old age he 
was especially modest and sensitive and was 
scrupulously careful to conduct himself in a 
manner befitting the dignity of an ex-President 



American Presidents 47 

of the United States. He thought it unseemly, 
for example, for a man who had held this high 
office to connect himself in any way with party 
politics. Although modest and sensitive, how- 
ever, he was free from that vanity and envy 
which constituted the besetting sin of John 
Adams. 

Like Jefferson, Monroe was never particu- 
larly effective as a public speaker. He was also 
a labored writer and his state papers are much 
inferior to those of Madison. Aside from the 
matter of expression, Monroe was not as logical 
or level-headed as his predecessor and these 
characteristics were, of course, reflected in his 
writings. He was fond of history and although 
he wrote with difficulty he aspired to authorship. 
He wrote a small book which he called A Com- 
pariso7i of the American Republic with the Re- 
publics of Greece and Rome. When the man- 
uscript was completed he submitted it to Judge 
Hay and asked for his estimate of it. The esti- 
mate came in the laconic sentence, * ^ I think your 
time could have been better employed.'^ 

Monroe was nearly 59 years of age when he 
became President and had been prominent in 
public life for many years prior to that time. 



48 American Presidents 

He was not a member of the Constitutional Con- 
vention of 1787 but was chosen in the following 
year, at the age of 30, to sit in the convention of 
his own State which ratified the Constitution 
after a memorable struggle. Monroe opposed 
the ratification very strenuously. He was a 
States-rights man and opposed on principle to 
centralization in government. He, with George 
Mason and Patrick Henry contended in the Con- 
vention with Madison, John Marshall and Ed- 
mund Kandolph. He was also at a later time 
a United States Senator, an Envoy to France, 
and Governor of his native State, as well as a 
prominent member of President Madison's cab- 
inet. In 1803, he had assisted Robert R. Living- 
ston in the purchase of Louisiana and prior to 
that time had served as minister to France. His 
mission was a failure and he wrote a book of 
five hundred pages in a futile effort to justify 
his conduct. It was clearly a case of protest- 
ing too much. 

Monroe lived in retirement in Virginia and 
New York for six years after leaving the presi- 
dential office and died on the 4th of July, 1831. 
On April 28, 1858, the one hundredth anniver- 
sary of his birth, his ashes were carried under 



American Presidents 49 

escort to Richmond, Virginia, and there re- 
interred in Hollywood Cemetery. 

The estimate of Dr. Daniel C. Oilman, the first 
President of Johns Hopkins University and also 
one of the biographers of Monroe, is interesting 
in this connection. ^'On reviewing all that I 
have been able to read in print and in manu- 
script, and all I have been able to gather from 
the writings of others,'' he remarks, *'the con- 
clusion is forced on me that Monroe is not ade- 
quately appreciated by his countrymen. He 
has certainly been insufficiently known, because 
no collection has been made of his numerous 
memoirs, letters, dispatches, and messages. He 
has suffered also by comparison with four or 
fLVQ illustrious men, his seniors in years and his 
superiors in genius, who were chiefly instru- 
mental in establishing this government on its 
firm basis. He was not the equal of Washing- 
ton in prudence, of Marshall in wisdom, of Ham- 
ilton in constructive power, of Jefferson in 
genius for politics, of Madison in persistent 
ability to think out an idea and to per- 
suade others of its importance. He was in 
early life enthusiastic to rashness, he was a 
devoted adherent of partisan views, he was 



50 American Presidents 

sometimes despondent and sometimes iras- 
cible; but as he grew older his judgment was 
disciplined, his self-control became secure, his 
patriotism overbalanced the considerations of 
party. Political opponents rarely assailed the 
purity of his motives or the honesty of his con- 
duct. He was a very good civil service re- 
former, firmly set against appointments to 
office for any unworthy reason. He was never 
exposed to the charge of nepotism, and in the 
choice of officers to be appointed he carefully 
avoided the recognition of family and friendly 
ties. His hands were never stained with pelf. 
He grew poor in the public service, because he 
neglected his private affairs and incurred large 
outlays in the discharge of official duties under 
circumstances which demanded liberal expen- 
diture. He was extremely reticent as to his 
religious sentiments, at least in all that he wrote. 
Allusions to his belief are rarely if ever to be 
met with in his correspondence. He was a 
faithful husband, father, master, neighbor, 
friend. He was industrious, serious, temperate, 
domestic, affectionate. He carried with him to 
the end of his life the good- will and respect both 
of his seniors and juniors. Many of those who 



American Presidents 51 

worked with him, besides those already quoted, 
have left on record their appreciation of his 
abilities and their esteem for his character.''^ 

Monroe, then, although a man of somewhat 
less magnitude than his predecessor, was, nev- 
ertheless, a useful and successful President. 
While Minister to France he had been recalled 
by President Washington on account of an os- 
tentatious and silly display of affection for that 
country ; and he has always been given too much 
credit for his modest part in the so-called ** Mon- 
roe Doctrine ' ' ; yet no man did so much as he to 
bring about that period commonly known as 
'^The Era of Good Feeling." Monroe was a 
man of impressive appearance and soldierly 
bearing, and when he made his two extended 
trips, the one through the North and the other 
through the South, delivering cordial and sen- 
sible addresses wherever he went, he did a great 
deal towards breaking down that spirit of sec- 
tionalism and party strife which was then grow- 
ing strong in the United States. 

Monroe's successor is one of the lofty peaks 
in the presidential range. John Quincy Ad- 
ams was probably the greatest man in the presi- 

^ James Monroe, pp 213-15. 



52 American Presidents 

dential office from Washington to Lincoln with 
the single exception of Thomas Jefferson. He 
was not the most influential man of the period 
— Andrew Jackson was that ; neither was he the 
most capable and successful President; but, all 
things considered, John Quincy Adams must be 
accounted, I think, the greatest man to occupy 
the President's chair for half a century. 

John Quincy Adams was a son of the *^ blunt 
and irascible old John Adams, '* the second 
President of the United States. It would be 
difficult to find a family in American history 
which has rendered a more effective or a more 
disinterested service to the country than the 
Adams family of Massachusetts — and the great- 
est of this family was John Quincy. He was 
born in the year following the repeal of the 
Stamp Act — in the midst of the Eevolutionary 
agitation; and at the age of seven, in company 
with his mother, he climbed a high hill near his 
home to listen to the guns at Bunker Hill and 
to gaze in awe upon the flames of Charlestown. 
At nine he upbraided himself in a letter because 
he had just entered the third volume of Smol- 
lett, when, according to his schedule he should 
have been half through the book. *^My 



American Presidents 53 

thoughts/' he said, in a deprecatory way, **have 
apparently been running after birds ' eggs, play 
and trifles. ' ' 

Adams had the best of opportunities for cul- 
ture and intellectual development. He trav- 
eled with his father in Europe, studied at the 
University of Leyden and was later graduated 
from Harvard College. He soon became dis- 
tinguished as a lawyer and statesman and at 
one time or another he filled with distinction 
almost all of the great offices of the United 
States. While Secretary of State under Mon- 
roe he became the principal author and most 
ardent advocate of what later became known as 
the *^ Monroe Doctrine.'* He was an excellent 
writer in both prose and verse and held a pro- 
fessorship in Harvard College for three years. 
He was a ^^ knight without fear and without 
reproach, ' ' and it is safe to say that no man in 
America, in 1825, possessed in an equal degree 
the characteristics of an ideal President; and 
yet his administration was, in some respects, a 
disappointment, and, for reasons which we can- 
not now analyze, he was denied the indorsement 
of a second term. 

In discussing the passing of Adams from the 



54 American Presidents 

presidency, Dr. Von Hoist remarks rather 
gloomily: **In the person of Adams, the last 
statesman who was to occupy it for a long time 
left the White House. ' * He was 61 years of age 
at the time and was what John T. Morse calls 
* * that melancholy product of the American gov- 
ernmental system — an ex-President.'* Adams, 
however, declined to be a ^ ^melancholy product*' 
and continued to serve his country for a score 
of years. Soon after retiring from the presi- 
dency, Adams was elected a member of the 
House of Eepresentatives from Massachusetts. 
He held this position until the time of his death, 
seventeen years later, and became known as 
*^The Old Man Eloquent," and as an able and 
fearless champion of the ** right of petition." 
He was stricken at his post of duty while at- 
tending a session of the House on February 21, 
1848. A bronze star embedded in the floor of 
the Capitol building marks the exact spot. 
There, as his biographer in the American 
Statesmen Series has remarked, *^the stern old 
fighter lay dying almost on the very field of so 
many battles and in the very tracks in which 
he had so often stood erect and unconquerable, 
taking and dealing so many mighty blows." 



American Presidents 55 

Two days later he passed away, one of the most 
cruelly maligned men in American history. 

During these seventeen years in the House of 
Eepresentatives Adams exhibited a remarkable 
fidelity to duty. He was usually present at his 
post, he was tireless in committee work and 
always voted in an intelligent and well-informed 
manner. It was his marvelous power of public 
speaking, however, that was his distinguishing 
trait in those years. *' Living in the age of ora- 
tory, '^ says John T. Morse, ''he earned the name 
of *the old man eloquent.' Yet he was not an 
orator in the sense in which Webster, Clay, and 
Calhoun were orators. He w^as not a rhetor- 
ician ; he had neither grace of manner nor a fine 
presence, neither an imposing delivery, nor even 
pleasing tones. On the contrary, he was excep- 
tionally lacking in all these qualities. He was 
short, rotund, and bald ; about the time when he 
entered Congress, complaints became frequent 
in his Diary of weak and inflamed eyes, and 
soon these organs became so rheumy that the 
water would trickle down his cheeks ; a shaking 
of the hand grew upon him to such an extent 
that in time he had to use artificial assistance 
to steady it for writing; his voice was high, 



56 American Presidents 

shrill, liable to break, piercing enough to make 
itself heard, but not agreeable. This hardly 
seems the picture of an orator; nor was it to 
any charm of elocution that he owed his influ- 
ence, but rather to the fact that men soon learned 
that what he said was always well worth hear- 
ing. . . . When invective fell around him in 
showers, he screamed back his retaliation with 
untiring rapidity and marvellous dexterity of 
aim. No odds could appal him. With his back 
set firm against a solid moral principle, it was 
his joy to strike out at a multitude of foes. 
They lost their heads as well as their tempers, 
but in the extremest moments of excitement and 
anger Mr. Adams's brain seemed to work with 
machine-like coolness and accuracy. With 
flushed face, streaming eyes, animated gesticu- 
lation, and cracking voice, he always retained 
perfect mastery of all his intellectual faculties. 
He thus became a terrible antagonist, whom all 
feared, yet fearing could not refrain from at- 
tacking, so bitterly and incessantly did he choose 
to exert his wonderful power of exasperation. 
Few men could throw an opponent into wild 
blind fury with such speed and certainty as he 
could; and he does not conceal the malicious 



American Presidents 57 

gratification which such feats brought to him. 
A leader of such fighting capacity, so courage- 
ous, with such a magazine of experience and in- 
formation, and with a character so irreproach- 
able, could have won brilliant victories in pub- 
lic life at the head of even a small band of de- 
voted followers. But Mr. Adams never had and 
apparently never wanted followers. Other 
prominent public men were brought not only into 
collision but into comparison with their contem- 
poraries. But Mx. Adams's individuality was 
so strong that he can be compared with no one. 
It was not an individuality of genius nor to any 
remarkable extent of mental qualities; but 
rather an individuality of character. To this 
fact is probably to be attributed his peculiar 
solitariness.'*^ 

John Fiske also refers to Adams's skill and 
power in debate and to the vituperative char- 
acter of his vocabulary. **As a parliamentary 
debater," says Fiske, **he has had few if any 
superiors; in knowledge and dexterity there 
was no one in the house who could be compared 
with him ; he was always master of himself, even 
at the white heat of anger to which he often 

i</o/m Quincy Adams, pp. 228-232. 



58 American Presidents 

rose; he was terrible in invective, matchless at 
repartee, and insensible to fear. A single- 
handed fight against all slave-holders in the 
house was something upon which he was always 
ready to enter, and he usually came off with 
the last word. Though the vituperative vocab- 
ulary of the English language seemed inade- 
quate to express the hatred and loathing with 
which the pro-slavery party regarded him, 
though he was more than once threatened 
with assassination, nevertheless his dauntless 
bearing and boundless resources compelled the 
respect of his bitterest opponents, and members 
from the south, with true chivalry, sometimes 
confessed it." 

Adams certainly had an ** ever-ready and 
merciless tongue." He referred to John Kan- 
dolph of Roanoke on one occasion as a * 'fre- 
quenter of gin lane and beer alley," and on 
another occasion he referred to the falsehoods 
which 'Hhe skunks of party slander . . . have 
been . . . squirting around the House of Rep- 
resentatives, thence to issue and perfume the at- 
mosphere of the Union." Adams was honest, 
blunt, and tactless and could stick pins into peo- 
ple in a very matter-of-fact and unimpassioned 



American Presidents 59 

way. He was always ready to hew to the line 
and let the chips fall where they would. It did 
not accord, for example, with his idea of the fit- 
ness of things when Harvard College proposed 
to confer the degree of Doctor of Laws upon An- 
drew Jackson. He expressed himself pointedly 
at the time and took pleasure in referring to the 
**hero of New Orleans'' as *^ Doctor Andrew 
Jackson.'' *^As myself an affectionate child of 
our Alma Mater, ' ' he said, * ^ I would not be pres- 
ent to witness her disgrace in conferring the 
highest literary honors upon a barbarian who 
could not write a sentence of grammar and 
hardly could spell his own name." Adams was 
regular in church attendance and read three 
chapters of the Bible every day but he was never 
*^ plenteous in mercy" and many of his phrases 
were strikingly unbiblical. The soft answer, for 
example, had no place in his rhetorical arsenal. 
In spite of his barbed tongue, however, he won, 
through his honesty and ability, the respect of 
his contemporaries. A striking evidence of this 
fact was seen on one occasion in the House of 
Representatives. He had been stricken by par- 
alysis in the streets of Boston in November, 
1846. Three months later, he returned to 



60 American Presidents 

Washington. When he entered the House, the 
members, many of whom had felt the sting of 
his whip-lash rhetoric, stood up in their places 
as a mark of respect while the doughty old war- 
rior was being escorted to his seat by a com- 
mittee appointed for that purpose. 

Personally, Adams was not a particularly at- 
tractive or magnetic man. In this respect he 
resembled somewhat the late Benjamin Har- 
rison, who, in the political slang of the day, was 
frequently termed *^a pretty cold proposition. '' 
He was intellectual rather than emotional, and 
his temperament was far removed from that of 
the popular idol. Being *^a Puritan of the 
sternest and most uncompromising sort, who 
seemed to take a grim enjoyment in the per- 
formance of duty, especially when disagree- 
able,'' he had a splendid *^ talent for making 
enemies. ' ' No man ever cared less for popular 
favor, if that favor had to be gained by truck- 
ling to the whims of the multitude. When Ed- 
ward Everett asked him on one occasion if he 
intended to do nothing at all to bring about his 
election to the presidency of the United States, 
his simple reply was: *' Absolutely nothing.'' 
At close range such simple honesty as this often 



American Presidents 61 

appears to be stupidity, or at best a species 
of stubbornness coupled with a haughty re- 
serve. You cannot make a reigning popular 
favorite out of an honest and outspoken states- 
man. He must bide his time. So it was with 
Adams. In these latter days, however, John 
Quincy Adams is coming into his own. He is 
coming to be recognized as one of the greatest 
of American statesmen. In ability and acquire- 
ments, in honesty of purpose, broad humanity 
and high ideals, John Quincy Adams was not 
excelled by any public man of his day; and I 
say this fully conscious of the fact that the day 
of Adams was also the day of Andrew Jackson, 
of Henry Clay, of John C. CaHioun, and of 
Daniel Webster. 



FROM JACKSON TO LINCOLN 



CHAPTER II 

FBOM JACKSON TO LINCOLN 

Between Jackson and Lincoln the presiden- 
tial curve reaches its lowest point. This period 
of twenty-four years constitutes a long, barren, 
and monotonous stretch in the course of which 
the presidency came perilously near to the 
*^ slough of despond." During this period, 
says Viscount Bryce, ^*from Jackson to the out- 
break of the Civil War in 1861, the Presidents 
were either mere politicians, such as Van Bu- 
ren, Polk, or Buchanan, or else successful sol- 
diers, such as Harrison or Taylor, whom their 
party found useful as figure-heads. They were 
intellectual pigmies beside the real leaders of 
that generation — Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. ' * 
^^ Jackson himself," he adds, **was something 
of both politician and soldier, a strong charac- 
ter, but a narrow and uncultivated intellect." 

This judgment, while true in the main, is, like 
most generalizations, too sweeping and indis- 

65 



66 American Presidents 

oriminating to be wholly just. Andrew Jack- 
son, for instance, was vastly more than a sol- 
dier-politician. He was the most influential 
man in ^imerican politics from the time of Jef- 
ferson to the opening of the Civil War. He 
dominated public affairs during his own and 
Van Buren's administration, and after his re- 
tirement to the *^ Hermitage," King Andrew, as 
the papers of the time facetiously called him, 
continued his benevolent reign. He was, as 
Viscount Bryce says, particularly in the early 
part of his career, a narrow and uncultivated 
intellect. But this is only one side of the shield. 
He was a man of impulse, but his impulses were, 
for the most part, sound. He was also a strong 
leader of tremendous motive power and bold in- 
itiative, absolutely honest and with the courage 
of his convictions. Andrew Jackson presented 
a figure little less than heroic when on Jeffer- 
son's birthday in 1830, he arose in his place at 
the banqueting table and, in an atmosphere 
surcharged with the spirit of nullification, pro- 
nounced his famous toast : * ^ The Federal Union : 
It must be Preserved." Unconsciously he was 
paving the way for the great work of Lincoln 
a generation later. If he had done nothing else 



American Presidents 67 

his existence would have been abundantly jus- 
tified. 

Jackson was a good representative of that 
rugged and rigid Scotch-Irish element which 
came to the uplands of the Carolinas about the 
middle of the eighteenth century. His father, 
also named Andrew, came to this locality from 
the northern coast of Ireland in 1765, bringing 
with him his wife and two sons. The young An- 
drew, who afterwards became President of the 
United States, was born in 1767, a few days 
after his father's death. Even at the present 
time there is no agreement as to the exact loca- 
tion of his birth-place. It was near the bound- 
ary line separating the two Carolinas and some 
contend that it was in South Carolina and others 
in North. Jackson, himself, however, in at least 
three official documents speaks of himself as a 
native of South Carolina. 

The schools of his locality were poor and 
scarce. Even if they had been better and more 
numerous it is not at all likely that the young 
Andrew would have profited much by them. He 
had none of the traits or tendencies of the 
scholar. He was not book-minded. He was a 
youth of unbounded and restless activity. He 



68 American Presidents 

had a fiery and ungovernable — certainly an un- 
governed — temper and soon drifted into mili- 
tary service where his impetuosity was his char- 
acteristic trait. From the army to politics was 
an easy and obvious transition in those days and 
Jackson soon became a popular idol in civil as 
well as militaiy life. At various intervals in 
his career he also gave some attention to sad- 
dlery, to farming, and to law. At 14, he was 
left alone in the world to fight his way up. At 
17, he abandoned the saddlery trade and took 
up the study of law. He never became much of 
a lawyer, however; in the first place he never 
applied himself seriously to the study of his 
profession and in the second place he was not 
legally or judicially minded. His talents lay in 
another direction. He was, however, a suc- 
cessful farmer and plantation master and was 
kind and considerate to those under his control. 
His financial credit was good and a note bearing 
his name was always accepted. 

In politics Jackson was impulsive rather 
than judicial. Jefferson said to Webster in 
1824, that he had often while presiding over 
the Senate seen Jackson get up in his place to 
speak and **then choke with rage so that he 



American Presidents 69 

could not utter a word/^ Any proposition 
which did not commend itself to him as honest 
and straight-forward in every respect was thor- 
oughly repellent. His instincts were funda- 
mentally honest, but his judgment was often at 
fault. He never vacillated, however, and the 
sobriquet of * ' Old Hickory, ^ ' which he earned in 
the War of 1812, was characteristic of his rigid- 
ity in civil as well as in military life. 

This kind of temperament does not commend 
itself as an ideal one for a man in a high execu- 
tive position, and, as a matter of fact, it was far 
from being so. Jackson himself realized as 
much at one time. When his friends first 
broached the matter of the presidency, he 
scouted the idea. **Do they suppose,'' said he 
with some warmth, *Hhat I am such a d — d fool 
as to think myself fit for President of the United 
States ? No, sir. I know what I am fit for. I 
can command a body of men in a rough way but 
I am not fit to be President. ' ' Clay was of the 
same opinion. In speaking of Jackson he re- 
marked significantly that a military hero was 
not a fit person to be President of the United 
States. This is perhaps the only point upon 
which Jackson and Clay agreed and the agree- 



70 American Presidents 

ment, even in this case, was quite unintentional. 

Another element of weakness in the make-up 
of Jackson was his inclination to believe every- 
thing of a derogatory character that anyone 
might say of Adams. The worst was none too 
bad. Politicians said that iidams had made a 
corrupt bargain with Clay in 1824 involving 
the presidency and the secretaryship of 
State ; they said that Adams was a monarchist 
and an aristocrat; that he had written a poem 
reflecting on the character of Jefferson ; that his 
wife was an English woman ; that he had made 
a subscription to a turn-pike road and had re- 
fused to pay it; that he was wealthy; that he 
was in debt ; that he was a chronic office-seeker ; 
that he had purchased a billiard table for the 
White House with public money — these and a 
score of similar charges found lodgment in 
Jackson's receptive mind. But notwithstand- 
ing these regrettable defects of character, Jack- 
son rendered a splendid service to the American 
Kepublic. 

Jackson stands as the personification of a new 
era in the history of the United States. The 
colonial days had passed and the national pe- 
riod was in reality just beginning. The older 



American Presidents 71 

statesmen of the constitutional period had now, 
for the most part, passed off the scene. Wash- 
ington, Hamilton, John Adams, and Jefferson 
were dead and Madison and Monroe were in re- 
tirement. A new set of statesmen had arisen to 
take their places and the *' Spoils System" in 
politics was being introduced. A new era in 
industry was also just dawning. This was the 
time of the beginning of the railroad, of ocean 
navigation, of the screw-propeller, of the Mc- 
Cormick harvester, of the use of anthracite coal 
and friction matches, — the day of the modem 
daily paper, of the founding of great cities, of 
immigration, and of the Abolitionists and other 
reformers. It was a day of crudeness, coarse- 
ness, and even of vulgarity; but at the same 
time a day of the most intense energy. In let- 
ters also the new republic was finding itself. 
Irving, Cooper and Bryant were laying the 
foundations of American literature. Last, 
and in some respects most important of all, the 
democracy of the West was about to triumph 
over the aristocracy of the East. Up to this 
time every President had been the product of 
the culture and refinement of the Atlantic sea- 
board, and the new West, rising like a giant in 



72 American Presidents 

the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, had never been 
recognized. Then as now there were many wise 
men in the East who were not tall enough to 
look over the Alleghany Mountains and recog- 
nize the possibilities of the great western coun- 
try. In the election of Jackson the common 
people felt that they had come into their own. 
Jackson, more than any other man, represented 
the ideals and ambitions of his time. He was 
as crude and as intense as his age. He himself 
was a western pioneer. He entered a law office 
at eighteen and while attempting to scrape up 
a speaking acquaintance with Blackstone and 
other legal worthies, with only meager success 
it must be admitted, he was described as **the 
most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse- 
racing, card-playing, mischievous fellow'* that 
the locality had ever known, — which was really 
saying a good deal, as wild oats was a staple 
crop in Kentucky and Tennessee in those days. 
He fought in the Eevolution at fourteen and 
won his spurs against the British at New Or- 
leans in 1815. He was quick and handy with 
horse-whip and pistol, had killed his man in a 
duel, and in one instance had pitched his adver- 
sary downstairs in a tavern brawl and carried 



American Presidents 73 

a bullet for twenty years as a reminder of the 
episode. The constitutional convention of Ten- 
nessee of 1796 had certain rules of order 
which impress one as being significant. One 
of them was this; **He that digresseth from 
the subject to fall on the person of any member 
shall be suppressed by the speaker. '^ Inas- 
much as Jackson was a member of that conven- 
tion the rule might not have been entirely su- 
perfluous. In spite of his impulsiveness and 
crudeness, however, he was a strong and force- 
ful personality, compelling either loyal friend- 
ship or bitter enmity on the part of those with 
whom he came in contact. \Mien he was inaug- 
urated the so-called plain people came from all 
parts of the United States to witness the tri- 
umph of their great apostle. They were not a 
silk-stockinged set. A writer of the time has 
put it on record that they overturned bowls of 
punch and smashed glasses and climbed with 
muddy cow-hide boots upon finely upholstered 
furniture in an effort to obtain a glimpse of their 
hero. Webster wrote as follows : * ^ To-day we 
have had the inauguration. A monstrous crowd 
of people is in the city. I never saw anything 
like it before. People have come five hundred 



74 American Presidents 

miles to see General Jackson and they really 
seem to think that the country is rescued from 
some frightful danger.'* The fears which the 
people expressed were, for the most part, un- 
founded ; and yet the coming of Jackson with all 
his faults and crudities was beneficial to the 
country. Lincoln used to say that the govern- 
ment needs an occasional bath of the people. 
Jackson administered such a bath in 1829. 

The sweeping statement of Viscount Bryce 
also does scant justice to Martin Van Buren. 
Van Buren was undoubtedly not one of the great 
Presidents; neither should he be classed, how- 
ever, with the ^^ mediocrities '* or ^ ^ accidents ' * 
of the White House. He was, as one of his 
biographers has remarked, ** a first-class second- 
class man.'' He came to the presidency se- 
verely handicapped. Jackson and his oppon- 
ents had sown the wind, and Van Buren was 
compelled to reap the whirlwind; and, to con- 
tinue the breezy metaphor, the * Apolitical hurri- 
cane" of the campaign of 1840 swept him from 
the presidential chair. In a word. Van Buren 
was held responsible for the panic of 1837 and 
kindred evils. * * The country made up its mind 
that he was a small, selfish, incapable politician, 



American Presidents 75 

and it judged him accordingly." It did him 
an injustice. Many of the catch phrases of the 
day carried cruel and unjust criticisms. The 
partisan press and hostile campaign speakers 
heralded him as *' little Van,'* ^'the American 
Talleyrand,'' *Hhe little Magician," and 'Hhe 
Machiavelli of American politics. ' ' 

Van Buren is another man who fought his way 
up from the ranks of the poor and humble to 
the highest official position in the United States. 
His father was a Dutch farmer and tavern 
keeper living in a very modest way at Kinder- 
hook, New York. His early education was mea- 
ger in quantity and very inferior in quality, 
but he had a good mind and a serious purpose 
and availed himself of every means of self- 
education. As a result he became an eminent 
lawyer, a convincing debater, and a writer of 
correct and effective English. He began the 
study of law at 14 and later became the law 
partner and intimate personal friend of Benja- 
min F. Butler in Albany. As a political leader 
and organizer he had no superior among the 
men of his time ; in fact he had reduced politi- 
cal organization to a fine art. He lacked the 
tremendous driving power of Jackson but he 



76 American Presidents 

infinitely excelled his gruff chief in tact and in 
the ability to deal with men. His domestic life 
was happy and above reproach. His one great 
sorrow was the death of his wife when he was 
37 years of age. Loyal to her memory, he never 
re-married. When nearly four score he died 
near the place of his birth on his country estate 
which he had named * * Lindenwald. " It was 
here that Irving some years before had put the 
finishing touches on his Knickerhocker History 
of New York. Even when the shadows began 
to lengthen, Van Buren's political and personal 
enemies were relentless in their persecution and 
he suffered merciless flagellations at the hands 
of those who hated the whole Jacksonian regime. 
Much of this was undeserved and even now 
many historical writers are still inclined to look 
upon Van Buren as a scheming, wire-pulling 
politician. As a matter of fact he was a very 
capable man and would have given the country 
a good administration under more favorable 
conditions. He was an eminent lawyer, a skill- 
ful politician, a refined, polite, and cultured gen- 
tleman, and a man of regular, correct, and tem- 
perate habits. Mr. Edward M. Shepard's esti- 
mate is probably too high. In his life of Van 



American Presidents 77 

Buren he says; **If to the highest rank of 
American presidents be assigned Washington, 
and if after him in it come Jefferson and per- 
haps Lincohi . . . the second rank would seem 
to include Madison, the younger Adams, and 
Van Buren.*' I am confident that most critics 
would strike out the word ** perhaps'* in con- 
nection with Lincoln and that not all would 
place Van Buren on a level with Madison and 
John Quincy Adams; yet he was undoubtedly 
above the average of American Presidents both 
in ability and in character. 

Between Van Buren and Lincoln seven men 
occupied the presidential chair. Two of these 
— Harrison and Taylor — owed their preferment 
to military fame rather than to statesmanlike 
qualities. Harrison was somewhat experienced 
in public civil life, but Taylor had been in the 
army since early manhood and had had no train- 
ing in governmental affairs. Although nomin- 
ated by the Whigs, he was in no sense a party 
man. In fact he had never voted. He had no 
definite views upon the great questions of the 
day and was not a little embarrassed when com- 
pelled to get some on short notice. Lowell made 
the most of the ludicrous situation in his Bige- 



78 American Presidents 

low Papers. He represented General Taylor 
as evading inquiries in regard to his views con- 
cerning slavery, the Mexican War, the Wilmot 
Proviso and other live questions, but as pro- 
nouncing with great definiteness and emphasis 
upon the Bank and other dead issues. The can- 
didate is made to conclude as follows : 

*'Ez to my princerples, I glory 
In hevin' nothin' o' the sort, 
I ain't a Wig, I ain't a Tory, 
I'm just a candidate, in short." 

A well known English literary critic recently 
remarked : * * You are as likely to be born with 
a silk hat on your head as with a good (literary) 
taste implanted in your breast.'^ It is equally 
true that no man is likely to be born with all of 
the qualifications of a great executive. A man 
can scarcely hope to be a successful President of 
the United States without a reasonable amount 
of theoretical knowledge and practical expe- 
rience in governmental affairs. 

It has been truly said of General Harrison 
that **he was not a great man, but he lived in a 
great time, and had been a leader in great 
things. '^ Harrison was a member of an illus- 
trious Virginia family and was born two years 



American Presidents 79 

before the Battles of Lexington and Concord. 
His father was Benjamin Harrison who had 
long been a leader in his native state. He had 
joined hands with Patrick Henry and James 
Monroe in 1788 in opposing the ratification of 
the Federal Constitution but gave it his enthusi- 
astic support immediately upon its adoption. 

The young William Henry was a student at 
Hampden-Sidney College and entered upon the 
study of medicine. His professional education 
was apparently cut short as we find him, at the 
age of 18, fighting Indians on the frontier. 
From that time on for many years, his career 
was intimately connected with Indian affairs. 
At times he appeared as their master upon the 
battlefield and again as the defender and pro- 
tector of their rights and interests. He pro- 
tected them from the ravages of smallpox and 
whisky and in many other ways strove to bet- 
ter their condition. His most famous victory 
over the red man was won in the Battle of Tip- 
pecanoe fought seven miles north of the present 
site of LaFayette, Indiana. After serving with 
distinction in the War of 1812, in the United 
States Senate, and as foreign minister, he re- 
tired to the seclusion of his country home at 



80 American Presidents 

North Bend, near Cincinnati, Oiiio. Here he 
served his neighbors in a modest way as * * clerk 
of the county court and president of the county 
agricultural society.'* It was from this rustic 
retreat that he was called to the presidency of 
of the United States. His previous career 
would not seem to have constituted a very good 
preparation for the presidency and he might not 
have been elected to that position if some one 
had not discovered that the east end of his 
house at North Bend was constructed of logs. 
Instantly the namp of this man, with the flavor 
of the back-woods about it, became connected 
with log cabins, coon skins, and hard cider and 
the people began to sing the praises of ^ ^ Tippe- 
canoe and Tyler too.'* All this appealed pow- 
erfully to the imagination of the period and ^ ^ old 
Tip" received 234 electoral votes to 60 for Mar- 
tin Van Buren. He died of pneumonia — some 
say that he was worried to death by office seek- 
ers — on April 4, 1841, just one month after his 
inauguration. His term of service was so short 
that he really made no record in the presidential 
office. He was, however, a man of sound patri- 
otism and rugged honesty, if not of statesman- 
like qualities. His impulses were sound and 



American Presidents 81 

courageous. When his end was near his mind 
began to wander and he exclaimed, as if ad- 
dressing his successor in office: **Sir, I wish 
you to understand the principles of this govern- 
ment. I desire them carried out. I ask noth- 
ing more.^^ John Tyler, the Vice-President, 
then served as chief magistrate of the nation 
for a period of three years and eleven months. 

Tyler was a Democrat elected on the Whig 
ticket. He had been nominated with General 
Harrison in order to attract those Democrats 
who were out of harmony with the Van Buren 
administration. When Tyler became President, 
the Whig members of Congress soon found that 
he had a mind and a will of his own. Immedi- 
ately after the Whig victory, General Harrison 
felt that Mr. Clay was presuming too much and 
said to him coldly, ** You seem to forget, sir, that 
it is I who am President. ' ' Tyler ^s general at- 
titude might have been similarly expressed. 
His whole administration was a running light 
with Congress in the course of which he vetoed 
important measures relating to the bank, the 
tariff and internal improvements. On one oc- 
casion (September 9, 1842), he vetoed the Fis- 
cal Corporation Bill after having apparently 



82 American Presidents 

promised the leaders in Congress that he would 
approve the measure when it reached his desk. 
This seemed to the Congressional leaders **a 
deliberate act of bad faith.'' When Tyler was 
a small boy in Virginia he attended a school 
taught by one John McMurdo, who was careful 
not to spoil the child by sparing the rod. Tyler 
remarked at a later time that *4t was a wonder 
he did not whip all the sense out of his schol- 
ars.'' Clay and some of the other public men 
of the time would probably agree that he did so 
quite effectively in at least one conspicuous in- 
stance. 

Tyler was born in Virginia in the second year 
of Washington's first administration and was 
graduated from William and Mary College at 
the age of 17. While in college he became in- 
terested in history, poetry and music and be- 
came, like Jefferson, a skillful violinist. Two 
years after his graduation, he was admitted to 
the bar and was soon after called into public life. 
He served in the state legislature, the national 
House of Representatives and in the United 
States Senate. He also served as Governor of 
Virginia and Chancellor of William and Mary 
College. He was a man of no mean oratorical 



American Presidents 83 

ability and was always a factor to be reckoned 
with while in Congress. He opposed the Bank 
and condemned the *'gag rule" against which 
John Quincy Adams spoke so effectively. Re- 
ferring to the Bank as ^Hhe original sin against 
the Constitution," he exclaimed, ^' Shall I per- 
mit this serpent, however bright its scales or 
erect its mien, to exist by and through my vote 1 ^ ' 
He had his own ideas on all public issues. They 
were not necessarily reasonable or right but 
they were honest and his own. He also had the 
courage of his convictions. On one occasion in 
the Senate of the United States, he cast a soli- 
tary negative vote and on another, while Presi- 
dent, he spurned a compromise, denouncing it as 
**a contemptible subterfuge, behind which he 
would not skulk." Clay persistently under- 
rated him. *^ Tyler dares not resist," said he. 
*'I'll drive him before me," to which Tyler, 
with his bristles all set, retorted, *^I pray you to 
believe that my back is to the wall, and that, 
while I shall deplore the assaults, I shall, if 
practicable, beat back the assailants;" and it 
must be admitted that he did put up a stiff fight 
on many occasions. One should not be deceived 
by appearances, however. In spite of these 



84 American Presidents 

facts, President Tyler was not a constructive 
statesman with penetrating insight or breadth 
of vision. Mere stubbornness sometimes masks 
under the guise of strength. Tyler also lacked 
those indefinable personal qualities which are 
necessary to true leadership. 

In some respects, Tyler's political preferment 
was greater than his talents would seem to jus- 
tify. He had none of that self-abnegation which 
comes to the humble-minded. He was exceed- 
ingly proud of the social standing of his family 
and considered himself quite infallible in his 
political opinions. He was correspondingly in- 
tolerant of the views of others and yet he did 
have a certain suavity of manner which was 
very attractive. **He was a man of talents and 
a gentleman, but not a great man. ' ' 

After retiring from the presidency in March, 
1845, Tyler took up his abode on an estate beau- 
tifully situated on the bank of the James river 
and to which he gave the redolent name of 
'^Shei^ood Forest.'* There he lived a quiet 
but influential life until the time of his death 
seventeen years later. He took a lively interest 
in all national affairs and was a leader in the 
secession movement, although by no means rad- 



American Presidents 85 

ical in his views. His ashes now repose in Hol- 
Ijrwood Cemetery, Eichmond, a few yards from 
the grave of James Monroe. 

It is interesting to note at this point that Ty- 
ler was the first vice-president to succeed to the 
presidency. On the whole it must be confessed 
that the arrangement for the election and suc- 
cession of the vice-president, prescribed in the 
twelfth amendment to the Constitution, has 
not been entirely successful. It was thought 
by the framers of the document that the vice- 
president would be one of the leading men of the 
nation and also the **heir apparent" to the 
throne. This was true in the cases of John Ad- 
ams and Jefferson but the custom soon lapsed. 
For 24 years after Jefferson's term of office, it 
was the custom in the Eepublican party to nom- 
inate the Secretary of State for the presidency 
but since Jackson's time there has been no fixed 
rule in this regard. The twelfth amendment, 
adopted in 1801, does not appear to have given 
satisfactory results. Gouverneur Morris op- 
posed it at the time on the ground that a man ex- 
pressly elected to that *^ ambiguous position'* 
would not usually be of the first rank. He pre- 
ferred the older method whereby an Elector 



86 American Presidents 

voted for two men without specifying which one 
he preferred for President. The fears of Mor- 
ris were well founded. The vice-presidency is 
too often used to conciliate a **minority faction" 
or to comply with certain geographical consid- 
erations. The natural fitness of the candidate 
for the possible duties of the office are not con- 
sidered. 

James K. Polk was certainly the least con- 
spicuous man who had ever been put forth by 
any political party for the presidency of the 
United States. He was a most uninspiring can- 
didate whose views were politically ** discreet*' 
and not too well known. He was, therefore, in 
the language of politics, an '^available'' candi- 
date. He was a **dark horse'' and his nomina- 
tion was the result of a stampede on the part of 
those who for one reason or another were op- 
posed to the other and more prominent candi- 
dates. * ^ Polk, Great God, what a nomination ! ' ' 
was the remark of Governor Letcher of Ken- 
tucky when he heard that the Democratic Na- 
tional Convention of 1844 had passed by Tyler, 
Van Buren and Calhoun and had nominated 
James K. Polk of Tennessee. 

Polk was born in North Carolina in 1795 and 



American Presidents 87 

was the oldest of a family of ten children. His 
ancestors came from Ireland and the name was 
originally Pollock, not Polk. His father was a 
farmer and surveyor and appears to have lived 
in prosperous and comfortable circumstances. 
The young Polk was well educated, having been 
graduated from the University of North Caro- 
lina at the age of 23. He made a good record 
in college — a remarkable one in some respects. 
The year after his graduation he took up the 
study of law, was admitted to the bar in due 
time and was building up a very successful prac- 
tice when called into public life. Although 
born in North Carolina, his active career was 
identified with the State of Tennessee, where 
the family had taken up its abode when the 
young James was 11 years of age. He was 
elected to Congress and was Speaker of the 
House of Representatives at the time that John 
Quincy Adams was leading the fight for the 
right of petition. He was later Governor of 
Tennessee and was twice defeated for the same 
position. In the course of his political cam- 
paigns he became an effective public speaker 
and was often referred to by admiring friends 
as * ' the Napoleon of the stump. ' ' Looking back 



88 American Presidents 

upon Polk's career one almost suspects that 
there might have been a slight tinge of sarcasm 
lurking in this appellation. Polk did have his 
good qualities, however. He was thoroughly 
honest and independent. His motives were 
pure and his ideals high. His will was of iron 
and his purpose definitely fixed. He was in- 
tensely religious and his private life was above 
reproach. He was, however, so enamored of 
the wisdom and righteousness of his own views 
that he had small capacity for harmonious ac- 
tion with other men. As a result of this weak- 
ness, his administration was characterized by 
an unusual amount of factional controversy. 

Polk's nomination was more or less accidental 
— the result of a fortuitous combination of cir- 
cumstances. His election, however, was not so. 
It was largely due to the fact that he made a 
candid and straightforward pronouncement 
upon the leading issue of the day — the annexa- 
tion of Texas — with no attempt at evasion or 
*^ beating 'round the bush." In April of 1844, 
he declared himself in favor of ^*the immediate 
re-annexation of Texas to the government and 
territory of the United States." And he stood 
by his guns consistently throughout the cam- 



American Presidents 89 

paign. His opponent, Henry Clay, on the other 
hand, a far abler man, by the way, declared 
against immediate annexation. He then pro- 
ceeded to explain this declaration and later ex- 
plained his explanation to such an extent that 
the people became confused and really did not 
know just where Clay stood. Polk reaped the 
reward of his candor and consistency. 

In looking back over Polkas administration of 
four years — like Hayes, Polk announced when 
he accepted the nomination that he would not 
be a candidate for a second term — it is ex- 
tremely difficult to account for these extrava- 
gant words from the pen of George Bancroft, 
the noted historian: ^*His (Polk's) adminis- 
tration, viewed from the standpoint of results, 
was perhaps the greatest in our national his- 
tory, certainly one of the greatest.'' It is well 
to remember in this connection that these words 
were written forty years after the close of 
Polk's administration and by one who served 
in that administration as Secretary of the 
Navy. It may be that an honest friendship for 
the President warped the judgment of the his- 
torian. Polk was not a great or a brilliant man 
and the results of his administration are not 



90 American Presidents 

outstanding. On the contrary, he was rather 
mediocre as a public man, narrow in his vision, 
and intensely partisan. The results of the ad- 
ministration accorded nicely with the talents of 
its chief. 

Zachary Taylor, like Andrew Jackson and 
William Henry Harrison, owed his election to 
military glory rather than to prominence in civil 
life. In fact Taylor was elected to the presi- 
dency of the United States upon the same basis 
that the giant guard or the dodging half-back 
is sometimes elected to the presidency of his 
class in college. 

Taylor was a member of an old but not a par- 
ticularly illustrious Virginia family. His early 
days were spent on a farm in the back country 
where opportunities for education and general 
culture were very meager. There was, how- 
ever, abundant opportunity for military service 
and in due course of time this hardy lad of the 
frontier developed into an effective Indian 
fighter and later into the ''Old Eough and 
Eeady" of the Mexican War. When nominated 
for the presidency by the Whig party in 1848 
over Clay, Webster and other leaders, his views 
were * ' unknown and undeveloped. ' ' He had no 



American F residents 91 

political ambitions or aspirations but wished 
only, when he retired from the army, to spend 
the remainder of his days on *^a stock farm in 
the hills." No platform was adopted by the 
nominating convention. None seemed neces- 
sary. As one of his supporters remarked: 
^^ General Taylor was able and honest and could 
be trusted to do the right thing." He did do 
the right thing according to his best lights. He 
was a man of rugged honesty, high character 
and strong personality and these qualities com- 
bined with his courage and common sense 
might have given the country a strong adminis- 
tration of public affairs, had his life been 
spared. He died in the White House on July 
9, 1850, after a service of only sixteen months. 
He was buried near Louisville, Kentucky, where 
a fine granite shaft, 37 feet high, marks his rest- 
ing place. He was succeeded by the Vice-Presi- 
dent, Millard Fillmore, who thus became the sec- 
ond *^ accidental President" of the United 
States. 

Fillmore was a native of New York and, like 
Garfield and Lincoln, fought his way up from 
grinding poverty to the chief magistracy of the 
Eepublic. His early surroundings and oppor- 



92 American Presidents 

tunities were not promising. He attended the 
back-woods school for three months each win- 
ter and thus had, as one of his biographers has 
remarked, abundant opportunity for * ^forget- 
ting during the summer what he acquired in the 
winter. " His home life was also uninspiring in 
most respects. His father's library is said to 
have consisted of two books — *'the Bible and a 
collection of hymns." **He never saw a copy 
of Shakespeare, or Robinson Crusoe, a history 
of the United States, or even a map of his own 
country, until he was 19 years of age ! " As an 
apprentice to a trade at 14, he had a sad and 
unpleasant experience which caused him to 
abandon this project for the study of law. His 
entry upon his chosen profession was consid- 
ered auspicious. He won his first case and with 
it a fee of four dollars. He was later elected 
to Congress where, as chairman of the Ways 
and Means Committee, he had a valuable legis- 
lative experience. In this respect, he had a 
great advantage over his immediate predeces- 
sor in office, and he differed from him in many 
other respects as well. He was notably less in- 
dependent. Clay and other Whig leaders found 
him more pliant and more inclined **to listen to 



American Presidents 93 

reason,'' as they put it. He did not approach 
Clay, or Webster, or Seward in ability, but as a 
President he was safe, honest and worthy. 

Second-rate men were now becoming fashion- 
able in the presidency of the United States. 
Franklin Pierce was elected to that office in 
preference to many other men of superior abil- 
ity. Pierce, a Democrat and strict construction- 
ist, was a native of New Hampshire where his 
father was a farmer. He entered Bowdoin 
College in 1820 and was graduated four years 
later, standing third in his class. Among his 
college mates were the poet Longfellow, and his 
intimate personal friend and biographer, Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne. After his graduation he 
studied law and became a successful practi- 
tioner. He sat in both houses of Congress but 
finally resigned his seat in the Senate to re- 
sume the practice of his profession. The Mexi- 
can War, however, called him into the public 
service again and he distinguished himself by 
conspicuous personal bravery. In the conven- 
tion of 1852, Pierce was, like his predecessor, a 
**dark horse,'' His name did not appear until 
the forty-ninth ballot. He was nominated on 
the fifty-second over James Buchanan, Stephen 



94 American Presidents 

A. Douglas and William L. Marcy — all abler 
men than he, but not so * ^ available ' ' from the 
political standpoint. Pierce's ** exquisite ur- 
banity'* aided him in the campaign as well as 
in the convention. 

One of Pierce 's biographers, Mr. Bainbridge 
Wadleigh sums up his characteristics as follows : 
*^ As an advocate he was never surpassed, if ever 
equalled, at the New Hampshire bar. He had 
the external advantages of an orator, a hand- 
some, expressive face, an elegant figure, grace- 
ful and impressive gesticulation, and a clear, 
musical voice, which kindled the blood of his 
hearers like the notes of a trumpet, or melted 
them to tears by his pathos. His manner had a 
courtesy that sprang from the kindness of his 
heart and contributed much to his political and 
professional success. His perceptions were 
keen, and his mind seized at once the vital points 
of a case, while his ready command of language 
enabled him to present them to an audience so 
clearly that they could not be misunderstood. 
He had an intuitive knowledge of human nature, 
and the numerous illustrations that he drew 
from the daily lives of his strong-minded audi- 
tors made his speeches doubly effective. He 



American Presidents 95 

was not a diligent student, nor a reader of many 
books, yet the keenness of his intellect and his 
natural capacity for reasoning often enabled 
him, with but little preparation, to argue suc- 
cessfully intricate questions of law.'^ 

The Southern Democrats favored Pierce for 
a second term but the more moderate men did 
not; and James Buchanan, Minister to Eng- 
land, was nominated and elected in 1856. 

Buchanan, a Pennsylvania man, was well 
known in public life for many years before he 
became President of the United States. After 
being graduated from Dickinson College in 1809, 
he studied law but soon the allurements of pub- 
lic life drew him away from his profession. A 
Jacksonian in politics, he sat in the House of 
Eepresentatives and in the Senate and also 
served as foreign minister and cabinet member. 
In all of these positions, he rendered an honest 
and acceptable service to the country. While 
not as decisive and as out-spoken as many of his 
predecessors, he did, at times, express his views 
in no uncertain way. In 1852, he opposed the 
candidacy of General Scott for the presidential 
nomination. ** Beware," he said, **of elevating 
to the highest civil trust the commander of your 



96 American Presidents 

victorious armies/' He was, however, careful 
to differentiate between the professional soldier 
and the soldier who came to the defense of his 
country in the time of crisis. 

The closing years of Buchanan's life were 
spent in a quiet but influential retirement at his 
country home, ** Wheatland,'' about a mile from 
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 

While personally attractive and fairly suc- 
cessful as a diplomat, Buchanan did not prove 
a capable executive in the time of national 
stress. Dr. Von Hoist's view is, however, un- 
doubtedly extreme. He speaks of the timidity, 
the moral cowardice, the dilatoriness, the inde- 
cision and the lack of statesmanlike qualities of 
the President and refers to him in connection 
with the events of 1859 as *^a weak-kneed old 
man." George Ticknor Curtis, the noted con- 
stitutional historian, errs, but not so grievously, 
on the other side, when he says, **No man was 
ever treated with greater injustice than he was 
during the last seven years of his life by a large 
part of the public. Men said he was a seces- 
sionist ; he was a traitor ; he had given away the 
authority of the government ; he had been weak 
and vacillating ; he had shut his eyes when men 



American Presidents 97 

about him, the very ministers of his cabinet, 
were plotting the destruction of the union; he 
was old and timid; he might have crushed an 
incipient rebellion, and he encouraged it. But 
he bore all this with patience and dignity, for- 
bearing to say anything against the new admin- 
istration, and confident that posterity would 
acknowledge that he had done his duty. . . . 
Mr. Buchanan's loyalty to the constitution of 
the United States was unbounded. He was not 
a man of brilliant genius, nor did he ever do 
any one thing to make his name illustrious and 
immortal, as Webster did when he defended the 
constitution against the heresy of nullification. 
But in the course of a long, useful, and consist- 
ent life, filled with the exercise of talents of a 
fine order and uniform ability, he had made the 
constitution of his country the object of his 
deepest affection, the constant guide of all his 
public acts.'' 

To sum up, then, two of the nine Presidents 
of this period — Jackson and Van Buren — have 
been generally underestimated; two — Harrison 
and Taylor — were military heroes; two others 
— Tyler and Fillmore — were accidents, some- 
what distressing but not fatal in character, and 



98 American Presidents 

the remaining three — Polk, Pierce, and Bu- 
chanan — were, it must be admitted, rather com- 
monplace men for the high office of the presi- 
dency. Polk was an obscure man, a compro- 
mise candidate, and the strongest point in his 
favor was his advocacy of the annexation of 
Texas. Pierce was also a ' ^ dark horse ' ' and his 
nomination quite took away the breath of 
Stephen A. Douglas. '*Alas!'' he remarked, 
^*from this time forth no private citizen is safe." 
Buchanan was the strongest and best known of 
the three and has been, I think, blamed over 
much for his seeming apathy during the closing 
months of his administration. 



FEOM LINCOLN TO WILSON 



CHAPTEE III 

FROM LINCOLN TO WILSON 

The Presidents of the United States may, 
roughly speaking, be divided into three classes, 
considering Jackson and Lincoln as dividing 
lines. The men of greatest ability fall in the 
first class — from Washington to Jackson ; those 
of the least ability in the second class — from 
Jackson to Lincoln; while the Presidents since 
Lincoln occupy an intermediate position. 

Lincoln was, by common consent, the ablest of 
the Presidents with the possible exception of 
the first, and some would not even except Wash- 
ington. Upon this point of contention, how- 
ever, let us not tarry. Such comparisons at 
best are rather ungracious, and in this par- 
ticular case are of little avail on account of the 
marked dissimilarity between the two men. 
Lincoln was unlike other men. He has been 
called **the most individual man who ever 
lived.'' Comparisons with other public men 

101 



102 American Presidents 

are thus made difficult. It is well nigh futile to 
philosophize about the personality of Lincoln, 
and this for two reasons which at first thought 
seem paradoxical. In the first place little can 
be added to the world's knowledge of his career, 
and in the second place he is as yet an unsolved 
mystery. His history has been studied with 
greater zeal than the history of any other Ameri- 
can. In 1909, his centenary year, every scrap 
of available information touching upon his 
career or personality was eagerly sought after 
and carefully scrutinized. And yet we do not 
fully know and understand the man. At the 
close of a learned and discriminating biography 
Mr. John T. Morse remarks: ''But Lincoln 
stands apart in striking solitude, — an enigma to 
all men. . . . Let us be content with this fact. 
Let us take him simply as Abraham Lincoln, 
singular and solitary, as we aU see that he was ; 
let us be thankful if we can make a niche big 
enough for him among the world's heroes, with- 
out worrying ourselves about the proportion 
which it may bear to other niches ; and there let 
him remain forever, lonely, as in his strange 
lifetime, impressive, mysterious, unmeasured, 
and unsolved." 



American Presidents 103 

It is, of course, too early to venture anything 
but a tentative opinion in regard to the Presi- 
dents since Lincoln's time; and yet there are 
some facts which seem quite definitely settled 
and a few personal characteristics which ap- 
pear* to be unmistakable. 

Andrew Johnson seems from this distance to 
have been a narrow-minded, stubborn man of 
strong personality. He was the natural prod- 
uct of his heredity and environment. Appren- 
ticed to a tailor at ten, he was taught the al- 
phabet by his fellow workmen and later learned 
to read almost unaided. His wife taught him 
to write but he was never able to use the pen 
with ease until he had been in Congress. As the 
*' Mechanic Governor" of Tennessee he showed 
a natural sympathy with the working classes, 
and as a member of the United States Senate 
he assailed secession and the South with a 
virulence almost unparalleled. It was his 
unionism and his geographical location rather 
than his ability or achievements which placed 
him on the Eepublican ticket with Lincoln in 
1864. He had always been a Democrat and in 
his letter of acceptance he disclaimed any de- 
parture from Democratic principles; but ac- 



104 American Presidents 

cepted the nomination, as he put it, upon the 
ground of **the higher duty of first preserving 
the government.'' 

General Grant was the most famous man to 
occupy the presidential office in this latter 
period. Although distinctively a military man, 
he was by no means unskilled in statecraft. In 
fact he was remarkably successful as an execu- 
tive considering his lack of preparation for the 
presidency. TJ'p to the time of his nomination 
in 1868 he had never taken any active part in 
politics and had voted for only one presidential 
candidate — James Buchanan — a Democrat. In 
early life he had had some affiliation with the 
Whigs, but had never been a pronounced party 
man; in fact several prominent Democratic 
leaders had interviewed him in regard to ac- 
cepting the Democratic nomination for the 
presidency only a short time before he was nom- 
inated by the Republicans. The decisiveness 
of his military temperament made him an effi- 
cient executive in some respects, but his un- 
bounded faith in his friends and in the integrity 
of his appointees led to several governmental 
scandals during his administration. Abso- 
lutely honest himself, he was slow to suspect 



American Presidents 105 

others, and in more than one instance he shut 
the door with a bang and locked it after the 
horse had been stolen. As General Horace 
Porter once remarked: ** Wherever he placed 
trust he reposed rare confidence, until it was 
shaken by actual proofs of betrayal. This char- 
acteristic of his nature led him at times to be 
imposed upon by those who were not worthy 
of the faith he placed in them; but persons 
that once lost his confidence never regained it. ' ' 
When thoroughly aroused he could lash the 
money changers from the temple. In 1875, for 
example, it became evident that several govern- 
ment officials were putting their hands into the 
funds collected from the manufacture of 
whisky. President Grant issued a vigorous 
order for their arrest and prosecution, closing 
the document with the famous words : * ^ Let no 
guilty man escape." Some of the offenders 
were powerful in politics and had influential 
friends but these facts did not save them from 
the prison bars. Grant purged the revenue 
service and, as is usually the case, was grossly 
maligned as his reward. These misrepresenta- 
tions, however, did not lessen his popularity 
either at home or abroad. Only a short time 



106 American Presidents 

after this episode he started upon his tour of 
the world and was accorded such receptions as 
have never been given to any other man. His 
wife went with him on his journey and later 
remarked that ^^ having learned a lesson from 
her predecessor, Penelope, she accompanied her 
Ulysses in his wanderings around the world.*' 
Rutherford B. Hayes is not usually thought 
of as one of the great Presidents and perhaps 
should not be so considered; and yet I have a 
feeling that in the future his name will be 
written much larger than it is at the present 
time. Conditions have not been favorable for 
an early recognition of his excellencies. Blaine, 
and not he, was the leading candidate for the 
Republican nomination in 1876, and the dis- 
pute over his election has hung like a dark cloud 
over his administration. Hayes was, neverthe- 
less, one of the best of men and an able man in 
addition. With him a new era in American his- 
tory begins — the period of the United Nation. 
The country had just emerged from the dark 
shadows of the Civil War, and the so-called 
*^ Southern Question'' had appeared for the last 
time in American politics in the election of 1876. 
An era of peace and good will was beginning 



American Presidents 107 

and Hayes was just the man to take the lead. 
Being of a conciliatory disposition, he appointed 
David M. Key, a Democrat and former Con- 
federate soldier, to a place in his cabinet, and 
one of the first acts of his administration was 
to recall the troops from the Southern States. 
He was also a tower of strength to the cause 
of civil service reform and his pithy epigram, 
*^he serves his party best who serves his coun- 
try best,'' has been quoted thousands of times 
by civil service reformers. 

Although a man of conciliatory temperament 
he also had the courage of his convictions. This 
fact was evident when he removed certain 
powerful men in his own party because they 
were using their offices to manage and control 
political affairs rather than in the service of 
the people. He also sent a clear and blunt 
statement of the facts* to the Senate in a spe- 
cial message. Chester A. Arthur was one of 
the officials thus removed. 

In another instance and at an earlier date he 
gave evidence of his patriotism and high sense 
of duty. During the war he was nominated by 
one of the Ohio districts for a seat in the House 
of Representatives. He was in the field at the 



108 American Presidents 

time and one of bis friends suggested that he 
get a leave of absence from the army for the 
purpose of making a canvass of the district. 
His reply was this: **Your suggestion about 
getting a furlough to take the stump was cer- 
tainly made without reflection. An officer fit 
for duty, who at this crisis would abandon his 
post to electioneer for a seat in Congress, ought 
to be scalped.'' He remained at his post of 
duty and was elected by a majority of twenty- 
four hundred. 

What President Hayes was is really more im- 
portant than what he did. The late Carl 
Schurz was one of many to testify to his moral 
worth. Mr. Schurz was Secretary of the In- 
terior in Mr. Hayes 's cabinet and consequently 
knew him in an intimate way. *^The upright- 
ness of his character," said Mr. Schurz, ^'and 
the exquisite purity of his life, public as well 
as domestic, exercised a conspicuously whole- 
some influence, not only upon the personnel of 
the governmental machinery, but also upon the 
social atmosphere of the national capital while 
he occupied the White House." In the words 
of a noted preacher, * ^purity has been the crown- 
ing quality of all the epoch-making men." It 



American Presidents 109 

may be too much to claim that Kutherford B. 
Hayes was an epoch-making man, but that he 
was pure in thought and act no one can deny. 

James A. Garfield, the successor of Mr. 
Hayes in the presidential office, was a man of 
fine character and good ability whose career 
was full of promise at the time of his tragic 
death. Mr. Garfield ^s successor was Chester 
A. Arthur, a machine politician, whose nomina- 
tion for the vice-presidency had been made, not 
upon the basis of merit, but as a concession to 
the Grant adherents and the New York ** stal- 
warts. '^ There are many points of similarity 
between the circumstances attending the nom- 
ination of Mr. Arthur in 1880 and those under 
which the vice-presidential candidate was 
placed upon the Eepublican ticket in the sum- 
mer of 1908. Notwithstanding his somewhat 
objectionable record as a politician, however, 
Mr. Arthur gave the country a conservative and 
dignified, if not an aggressive, administration. 

Grover Cleveland, the only Democratic Presi- 
dent since the Civil War, aside from President 
Wilson, was, I think, the strongest and most 
useful executive from Lincoln to Roosevelt. 
Mr. Cleveland was not a man of fine fiber; 



110 American Presidents 

neither did he possess that delicate sense of 
the proprieties and ethical niceties which char- 
acterized Mr. Hayes and Mr. Garfield; yet he 
was a man of sound judgment, bold initiative, 
splendid courage, and robust honesty. His ad- 
ministrations were vigorous, wholesome, and 
business-like and his policies were far-sighted. 
In the last few years public opinion in this coun- 
try has been drifting, slowly but surely, towards 
the policy outlined in his famous tariff message 
of December, 1887. 

Benjamin Harrison was President of the 
United States for only one term and no event 
of unusual importance is connected with his ad- 
ministration ; yet for intellectual power Mr. 
Harrison was probably not surpassed by any 
American President. The ninety-four im- 
promptu speeches which he made during the 
campaign of 1888 and the one hundred and 
forty short addresses delivered in thirty-one 
days during his trip to the Pacific Coast and 
return are little less than marvels of their kind. 
The average extempore campaign speech in the 
United States is not an impressive utterance. 
It usually begins with a compliment, sometimes 
forced, to the people or the locality where the 



American Presidents 111 

speech is being delivered. Then follows, per- 
haps, a mild pleasantry, more or less obvious in 
character. Next in order will come a few con- 
ventional phrases and high sounding platitudes. 
A fair modicum of buncombe, not a little clap- 
trap, and perhaps a dash of demagogery, preju- 
dice, and partisanship are added to make an ap- 
pearance of strength and to arouse enthusiasm. 
The orator tries to take himself seriously and 
so do his auditors, but none of us in our saner 
moments are profoundly impressed when we are 
told that our geese are all swans. What a strik- 
ing contrast we find in Benjamin Harrison's 
short addresses! One marvels that the terse 
and polished sentences so heavily freighted with 
meaning and so appropriate to the audience and 
to the occasion could have been turned off with 
no apparent effort or preparation. 

A man of Mr. Harrison's supreme intellectu- 
ality must of necessity be a man of positive con- 
victions. This fact cropped out in the early 
part of his presidency. There were those who 
freely predicted that Mr. Blaine, the Secretary 
of State, and not he, would be the real Presi- 
dent of the United States. This delusion was 
soon dispelled. The lapse of time will, in all 



112 American Presidents 

probability, cause us to revise our estimates of 
the acts and capabilities of our recent Presi- 
dents and I have a feeling that when Benjamin 
Harrison is viewed in his true historical per- 
spective he will appear much larger and more 
important than he now does. 

I do not feel, however, that the same will be 
true of President McKinley. His tragic and 
untimely death and more particularly his love- 
able personality and the purity of his life have 
given his contemporaries an exaggerated no- 
tion of his strength and importance as a public 
man. A sensitive man of excessive amiability 
and shrinking conservatism can hardly be ex- 
pected to dominate affairs with the bold initia- 
tive of a true leader. He naturally becomes a 
follower rather than a leader, an interpreter 
rather than a creator of public opinion. 

Now what shall we say of the successor to 
President McKinley? That man would be in- 
deed rash who would attempt at this time 
to pass anything like a final judgment upon the 
ability and services of Theodore Koosevelt ; but 
that he is a man of unusual ability and one who 
has rendered a valuable service to the country, 
few, I think, will deny. Some, no doubt, would 



American Presidents 113 

like to see in the chief executive a greater de- 
gree of presidential dignity, with less of im- 
pulse and more of reason. Many regret that 
in the organization of Ananias Clubs Mr. Eoose- 
velt has put so much emphasis upon Touch- 
stone's advanced degrees of the lie. They 
would prefer the ** retort courteous," or the 
**quip modest,'' or even the ** reply churlish," 
to the '* countercheck quarrelsome," the **lie 
circumstantial," or the *4ie direct." In spite 
of all this, however, it is safe to say that Mr. 
Roosevelt is a man of tremendous motive power, 
physical as well as mental, and that he has 
stirred up the dry bones of conventionality in 
a most refreshing if not a dignified way; and 
I should not be surprised if the historian of the 
future were to set Mr. Eoosevelt down as the 
chief leader in the present civic renaissance and 
the first apostle in what President Angell once 
termed **The Age of the Quickened Con- 
science. ' ' 

It is likewise too early to look upon Presi- 
dent Taft's administration as a matter of his- 
tory. Judged superficially, it would seem to 
have been a partial failure ; but judged from the 
standpoint of actual achievement it was by no 



Ill American Presidents 

means so. Mr. Taft suffered, as Van Buren 
did, in comparison with his predecessor, and he 
was not always happy in the choice of his ad- 
visors. He was also, I have no doubt, often 
compelled by the demands of practical politics 
to do things which must have been exceedingly 
distasteful to him. In so far as personal char- 
acter and high ideals are concerned, Mr. Taft 
will compare favorably with any of his pred- 
ecessors in the presidential office. The eight 
votes in the Electoral College do not repre- 
sent the estimate which the American people 
have put upon the character and services of 
President Taft. 

President Wilson is a type of man compara- 
tively new to American politics. The type is 
familiar enough in Europe but not in the United 
States. This type is a power in the govern- 
ments of Europe and if President Wilson's two 
administrations should meet with the general 
approval of the American people — and I can see 
no reason now why they should not do so — the 
results will be far-reaching. It cannot be de- 
nied that a large part of the people are tired of 
the old-school politician and his ** practical" 
methods and are ready to welcome a new order 



American Presidents 115 

of things. Some have been disappointed with 
the results of the first administration. Possi- 
bly they may have expected too much. At any 
rate it should be remembered that a President is 
far more independent and free to act in his sec- 
ond administration than in his first. The out- 
come will be awaited eagerly and, I trust, sym- 
pathetically by patriotic Americans. 



THE ETHICS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL 
CAMPAIGN 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ETHICS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN 

One of the chapters of Lord Bryce's famous 
work, The American Commonwealth, is en- 
titled, **Why Great men are not chosen Presi- 
dents." Near the close of the chapter he gives 
this interesting summary: **We may now an- 
swer the question from which we started. 
Great men are not chosen Presidents, firstly, be- 
cause great men are rare in politics ; secondly, 
because the method of choice does not bring 
them to the top ; thirdly, because they are not, in 
quiet times, absolutely needed. ' ' 

Such a statement as this should furnish food 
for reflection. While I am not prepared to ad- 
mit, without qualification, that *^ Great men are 
not chosen Presidents,'^ we must all acknowl- 
edge, I think, that there is a measure of truth 
in the comment of Lord Bryce. While with cer- 
tain exceptions the Presidents of the United 
States have been great men and truly repre- 

119 



120 American Presidents 

sentative of the nation, it must seem regrettable 
to every student of our history that we have not 
been able to utilize in the presidential office the 
superior abilities of such men as Hamilton, 
Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Blaine, Seward and 
Sumner. As a general rule, we may say that 
the presidential office has been filled by our 
great but not always by our greatest men. 
There are reasons for this state of things. It 
is undoubtedly true that business and the pro- 
fessions, rather than politics, have attracted the 
best talent of the nation and will continue to do 
so until a public career is made more attractive 
by being made more continuous and dignified. 
It is also true, as Lord Bryce says, that great 
men ** are not in quiet times, absolutely needed. '* 
It is quite probable also that some of our states- 
men of superior ability, such as Clay and Sum- 
ner, would have been only moderately success- 
ful as chief executives. It is quite possible that 
a man of less ability but of different tempera- 
ment might have given the country a more satis- 
factory administration of public affairs. 

Lord Bryce also refers to *Hhe method of 
choice.'' This is the part of his comment to 
which I wish to give a more extended consid- 



American Presidents 121 

eration. It seems to me that the best talent of 
the nation will not be attracted to the presiden- 
tial oflSce while the methods of the political cam- 
paign remain as they now are. A glance at the 
ethics of the presidential campaign in the 
United States is necessary to an adequate com- 
prehension of this phase of the subject. 

The student of current politics might easily 
become pessimistic and cynical as he considers 
the methods which are employed in the average 
American political campaign. No stone, ap- 
parently, is left unturned, and the end justifies 
the means. The speeches are bombastic and 
sensational; personalities are freely indulged 
in; principles are often lost sight of; and the 
cry of fraud is raised after every election. 
Money is freely used; some of it legitimately, 
more of it corruptly, and the partisan press is 
vindictive, mendacious, and unprincipled. Po- 
litical morals seem to be at a low ebb, and if 
the observer did not employ the comparative 
method he would undoubtedly be justified in 
drawing some very serious conclusions. The 
comparative method, however, has its comforts. 
It is only by comparing the present with the past 
that progress can be noted; and when we do 



122 American Presidents 

this we see that the present deplorable campaign 
methods were preceded by others of a still more 
deplorable character. In other words, while the 
methods of recent political campaigns are far 
from ideal, they are, for the most part, a vast 
improvement upon those of almost any other 
epoch in our history. 

We reverence the Fathers of the Republic ; we 
defer to their opinions and ascribe to them an 
almost superhuman wisdom ; we look upon their 
utterances as little less than inspired, and yet we 
find that they fared badly in the political dis- 
cussions of their time. Neither their great 
service nor their high character sufficed to shield 
them from infamous calumnies. They exempli- 
fied Shakespeare's famous statement **Be thou 
as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not 
escape calumny.'' 

We are accustomed now to look upon the 
members of the Constitutional Convention of 
1787 as high-minded men of spotless integrity; 
and so they were, almost without exception. 
Yet many of these men, in fact, some of the 
ablest and best of them, w^ere relentlessly vili- 
fied. James Wilson, a man of lofty motives and 
exceptional force of character and one of the 



American Presidents 123 

greatest of the constructive statesmen of the 
Convention, was referred to repeatedly by the 
papers of the time as '^ Jimmy,'' ** James, the 
Caledonian,'' and the ** lieutenant-general of the 
myrmidons of power." Kobert Morris was 
*^ Bobby, the Cofferer," who wanted a new form 
of government because he was hopelessly in debt 
to the old; Gouverneur Morris was ^^Gouvero, 
the cunning man," and Thomas MiflQin was 
* ^ Tommy, ' ' the quartermaster-general, who sup- 
ported the new Constitution because he was 
$400,000 short in his accounts. Even Benjamin 
Franklin did not escape the vile attacks, and he 
was virtually called a dotard because of his ad- 
vanced years. In fact no man escaped, how- 
ever patriotic his conduct or disinterested his 
motives. 

Any one who imagines that Washington was 
universally met with garlands of flowers and 
paeans of praise, as at the Trenton bridge in 
1789, will be rudely shocked by a perusal of the 
newspapers of the period. After serving his 
country, without money and without price, in the 
French and Indian War and the Kevolution, as 
president of the Constitutional Convention and 
as President of the United States for two terms, 



124 American Presidents 

he retired on the 4th of March 1797 to his home 
at Mount Vernon. He had delivered his ** Fare- 
well Address/' which fell like a benediction upon 
the American people. It would seem that 
^^ peace on earth and good will to men'' might 
well be the chosen motto of the time, yet the 
Republican press was most vindictive in some 
instances. On the 6th of March, two days after 
his retirement, the Aurora published the follow- 
ing comment: '* *Lord, now lettest Thou Thy 
servant depart in peace,' was the pious ejacula- 
tion of a pious man who beheld a flood of hap- 
piness rushing in upon mankind. If ever there 
was a time that would license the reiteration of 
the ejaculation, that time has now arrived, for 
the man who is the source of all the misfortunes 
of our country is this day reduced to a level with 
his fellow citizens, and is no longer possessed of 
power to multiply evils upon the United States. 
If ever there was a period for rejoicing, this 
is the moment. Every heart, in unison with 
the freedom and happiness of the people, ought 
to beat high with exultation that the name of 
Washington ceases from this day to give cur- 
rency to political insults, and to legalize corrup- 
tion. A new era is now opening upon us, an era 



American Presidents 125 

which promises much to the people, for public 
measures must now stand upon their merits, and 
nefarious projects can no longer be supported 
by a name. When a retrospect has been taken 
of the Washington administration for eight 
years, it is a subject of the greatest astonish- 
ment that a single individual should have cank- 
ered the principles of republicanism in an en- 
lightened people just emerged from the gulf of 
despotism, and should have carried his designs 
against the public liberty so far as to have put 
in jeopardy its very existence. Such, however, 
are the facts, and with these staring us in the 
face, this day ought to be a jubilee in the United 
States. ' ' Such was the parting shot which the 
Aurora fired at the ** Father of his Country!" 
It may not always be true that republics are 
ungrateful, but it is certainly true that the par- 
tisan press in a republic is without either grati- 
tude or generosity. 

We usually place Lincoln next to Washington 
in our national thinking. But he did not es- 
cape the despicable campaign methods of his 
time. He was abused in a coarse, brutal, and 
personal way. He was deserted by many in his 
hour of need who should have been his friends. 



126 Ainerica)h Presidents 

Thadcleus bteveus, leader of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, declared in 1864 that Arnold of 
Illinois was the only political friend that the 
President had in the lower house at that time. 
In the course of the same year the Freemont 
Club expressed its disgust at the *' imbecile and 
vacillating ' ' policy of President Lincoln. Wen- 
dell Phillips denominated Lincoln's administra- 
tion ^ ^ a civil and military failure. ' ' During the 
campaign of 1860 Phillips had been still more 
abusive. Referring to the obscurity of Lin- 
coln at the time he asked with some indigna- 
tion: **TVho is this huckster in politics!*' 
**Who is this county court advocate T' Phil- 
lips also published an article entitled *' Abraham 
Lincoln, the Slave Hound of Illinois," the first 
sentence of which ran as follows: *'We gibbet 
a Xorthern Hound to-day, side by side with the 
infamous Mason of Virginia." Lincoln's per- 
sonal appearance was ridiculed in the papers of 
the day. He was stupid, vulgar, and repulsive. 
He was the ape, the gorilla, and by some it was 
said that African blood flowed in his veins. He 
was a coarse, uncouth clod-head, his grammar 
was perverted, and his rhetoric outrageous; 
notwithstanding the fact that we now look upon 



American Presidents 127 

his addresses and state papers as models of 
terse and forceful English. 

In 1866 Mr. Edward A. Pollard, editor of the 
Eichmond Examiner, said that * * the new Presi- 
dent (had) brought with him the buffoonery and 
habits of a demagogue of the backwoods.'^ 
**We have already stated," he said, **that Mr. 
Lincoln was not elected President of the United 
States for any commanding fame, or for any 
known merit as a statesman. His panegyrists, 
although they could not assert for him a guid- 
ing intellect or profound scholarship, claimed 
for him some homely and substantial virtues. 
It was said that he was transparently honest. 
But his honesty was rather that facile disposi- 
tion that readily took impressions from what- 
ever was urged upon it. It was said that he 
was excessively amiable. But his amiability 
was animal. It is small merit to have a Fal- 
staffian humor in one's blood. Abraham Lin- 
coln was neither kind nor cruel, in the proper 
sense of these words, because he was destitute 
of the higher order of sensibilities. 

**His appearance corresponded to his rough 
and uncultivated mind. His figure was tall and 
gaunt looking; his shoulders were inclined for- 



128 American Presidents 

ward ; his arms of unusual length ; and his gait 
astride, rapid, and shuffling. The savage wits 
in the Southern newspapers had no other name 
for him than the * Illinois Ape/ '' 

It is needless, however, to multiply instances 
of this character. We are inclined, and with 
good reason, I think, to look upon Washington, 
Lincoln, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Adams, and 
John Quincy Adams as six of the greatest and 
best men in the history of the public life of the 
United States ; and yet if we were to trust the 
testimony of the contemporary partisan press 
and of opposition campaign orators we would 
be forced to regard them as the most consum- 
mate villains of their time. 

In making an optimistic comparison between 
the campaign methods of this and other days I 
do not mean to say that statements equally 
extreme and vituperative are not now some- 
times made in the heat of a political campaign; 
but I am confident that they are neither so fre- 
quent nor so typical as they once were. Neither 
are they so effective in political contests. The 
people of to-day must be reached more largely 
through the intellect than through the emo- 
tions. They are not so easily deceived. They 



American Presidents 129 

have outlived, to a certain extent, their gregari- 
ous impulses and are not so easily herded or 
stampeded as they were a few generations ago. 
In fact, abuse, personalities, and bombast are 
likely to have a boomerang effect. When a 
prominent candidate for political office said 
some things, on the eve of a presidential elec- 
tion, about his opponent's sympathy for cor- 
porations and the use of corporate funds in the 
campaign, and was not able to prove his asser- 
tions, he must have been painfully aware of the 
fact that he had made a tactical blunder, to say 
the least. As soon as the fact is fully appre- 
ciated by our political leaders that these meth- 
ods are really not effective, they will be wholly 
discarded. 

Another improvement in the ethics of the 
campaign may be noted in the attitude which 
public men assume towards their political op- 
ponents. There has been, I am sure, in recent 
years, more of dignity and courtesy on the part 
of public men in their dealings with political 
rivals. *'The blunt and irascible old John 
Adams," as his biographer in the American 
Statesmen Series calls him, was a really great 
man in many respects, and Thomas Jefferson 



130 American Presidents 

was a greater man, but the petty jealousies, bick- 
erings, and animosities which existed between 
the two men redound to the glory of neither. 
Alexander Hamilton, next to Washington, was 
the m-ost useful man of the constitutfonal period, 
and the most brilliant American of his time 
without any exception; yet he and Jefferson, 
as the latter expressed it, faced each other *Uike 
two fighting cocks in a pit.'' Neither was en- 
tirely candid, much less magnanimous. They 
must divide the dishonor. 

Hamilton and John Adams were the two lead- 
ing men in the Federalist party in 1800. Adams 
was the choice of his party for a second presi- 
dential term, and Hamilton, of course, was ex- 
pected to support him. This he did outwardly, 
but under cover his attitude was treacherously 
hostile. He wrote a letter to be distributed, 
as he said, *4n a judicious manner,'' on the 
** Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, 
Esq., President of the United States." In the 
course of this letter of fifty printed pages he 
attempted to show that Adams was entirely un- 
fitted for the office which he held. He did not 
possess the talents necessary for the adminis- 
tration of the government. He had defects of 



American Presidents 131 

personal character which unfitted him for the 
presidency. He was an eccentric, vain, and 
jealous man, much given to foibles and 
crotchets ; his French policy was pernicious ; he 
had an ungovernable temper and gave way to 
paroxysms of anger, and had apparently none 
of those qualifications which a President of the 
United States should possess; yet, said Hamil- 
ton in conclusion, / am advising my friends to 
vote for him nevertheless. The letter was in- 
tended for secret distribution but a copy of it 
fell into the hands of Aaron Burr and was 
spread far and wide. The disclosure of this 
treachery apparently did not perceptibly lessen 
the prestige of Hamilton, yet I am confident that 
a similar piece of intrigue in our own day would 
relegate its author to political oblivion. 

Again when Jefferson came to Washington 
City to assume his presidential duties on the 4th 
of March, 1801, he did not find his predecessor 
on hand to give him the customary greeting. 
His predecessor, John Adams, was petty 
enough to go out of town under cover of the 
night rather than extend his hand to his success- 
ful rival. Such a thing could hardly happen at 
the present time. Political contentions were 



132 American Presidents 

probably never more bitter in the United States 
than during the presidency of John Adams. 
**Men who had been intimate all their lives/' 
wrote Jefferson, ** cross the street to avoid meet- 
ing and turn their heads another way lest they 
should be obliged to touch their hats/' 

The ^ ' era of good feeling, ' ' too, is very largely 
a misnomer. It is commonly said that during 
the interval between the downfall of the Feder- 
alist party in the administration of Jefferson 
and the organization of the Whig party in the 
time of Jackson, the utmost of good feeling pre- 
vailed. It is true, of course, that party lines 
had vanished for the time being and party con- 
tentions had ceased, but a contest over princi- 
ples was succeeded by a contest over individuals, 
and personal animosities were rife in this so- 
called **era of good feeling.'' The election of 
1824 has been called the ** scrub race" for the 
presidency. There were seventeen candidates 
and four of them — Jackson, Adams, Crawford, 
and Clay — received votes in the Electoral Col- 
lege. The issues were men rather than princi- 
ples, and a deplorable scramble resulted in the 
course of which Mr. Jackson expressed his opin- 



American Presidents 133 

ion of Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay in terms more 
forcible than elegant. 

Undoubtedly the most picturesque character 
of this period was the eccentric John Eandolph 
of Eoanoke. He was peculiar both mentally and 
physically. A Charleston bookseller put on rec- 
ord a description of his personal appearance in 
1796, when he was approaching his majority — a 
description, by the way, w^hich he never really 
outgrew. He was described as a **tall, gawky- 
looking, flaxen-haired stripling, apparently of 
the age from sixteen to eighteen, with a com- 
plexion of a good parchment color, beardless 
chin, and as much assumed self-confidence as any 
two-footed animal I ever saw.'' Eandolph, al- 
though a freak in some ways, was a man of real 
genius, a hard hitter, a good fighter, and remark- 
ably effective in his public utterances. His sar- 
casm cut like acid, and his bold statements and 
unconventional phrases startled his audiences. 
When under the influence of liquor he was dash- 
ing, brilliant, and vitriolic. Under arid condi- 
tions he was much less interesting. He was 
quite impartial, too, in the bestowal of his rhe- 
torical attentions. Practically all the leading 



134 American Presidents 

public men of the 'time experienced one or more 
of his classic flagellations. Washington, Jef- 
ferson, Madison, Monroe, Clay, and the two Ad- 
amses felt the sting of his whip-lash rhetoric on 
more than one occasion. For thirty years he 
availed himself of every opportunity to casti- 
gate the two Adamses, John and John Quincy. 
**The cub,'' said he, *4s a greater bear than the 
old one." Whether sober or intoxicated, or in 
a state of semi-saturation, his invective was 
copious, continuous, and vehement, when devot- 
ing himself to these two New Englanders. 
Sometimes he couched his ideas in polished, 
stilted sentences with an Addisonian suggestion 
and again he employed phrases and comparisons 
reeking with vulgarity. In 1826 Randolph paid 
his respects to John Quincy Adams and his Sec- 
retary of State, Henry Clay, in a speech which, 
it was said, * * exhausted the unrivalled resources 
of his vocabulary." *^I was defeated," he ex- 
claimed, ** horse, foot, and dragoons, — cut up 
and clean broken down by the coalition of Blifil 
and Black George, — ^by the combination, unheard 
of till then, of the Puritan with the blackleg." 
He then took Mr. Clay's ancestors to task for 
bringing into the world * * this being, so brilliant 



American Presidents 135 

yet so corrupt, which, like rotten mackerel by 
moonlight, shined and stunk.'' President Ad- 
ams retorted by applying to Eandolph the lines 
of Ovid in which the poet draws a picture of 
Envy: 

* * His face is livid, gaunt his whole body ; 
His breast is green with gall; his tongue drips 
poison." 

And all this, let it be remembered, was in the 
**era of good feeling.'* 

It should not be thought, however, that John 
Eandolph was a mere peddler of billingsgate. 
He was really a man of ability and influence, and 
notwithstanding his pitch-fork tendencies did 
have some lucid intervals and was not always 
indecent. He was a peculiar compound. He 
had some of the vulgarity of a river boatman, a 
genius for wordcraft similar to that of the late 
John J. Ingalls, and a dash of the brilliant mean- 
ness of Eoscoe Conkling. 

It is noticeable also that the ** hurrah ele- 
ment" so prominent in the campaigns of a gen- 
eration or two ago now serves, when it appears, 
only to provoke mirth and laughter. For sheer 
froth and nonsense the campaign of 1840 is with- 
out a parallel in our history. When the Whigs 



136 American Presidents 

nominated General Harrison for the presidency 
an eastern paper spoke contemptuously of him 
and advised him not to aspire to that high office 
but to go back to his log cabin and drink his 
hard cider in an environment of coon skins. Al- 
most by common consent the log cabin, the coon 
skin, and the cider cask became the Whig em- 
blems of the campaign. Carl Schurz remarks in 
his Life of Henry Clay : * * There has probably 
never been a presidential campaign of more en- 
thusiasm and less thought than the Whig cam- 
paign of 1840. As soon as it was fairly started, 
it resolved itself into a popular frolic. There 
was no end of monster mass meetings, with log 
cabins, raccoons, and hard cider. One half of 
the American people seemed to have stopped 
work to march in processions behind brass bands 
or drum and fife, to attend huge picnics, and to 
sing campaign doggerel about ^Tippecanoe and 
Tyler too. * The array of speakers on the Whig 
side was most imposing: Clay, Webster, Cor- 
win, Ewing, Clayton, Preston, Choate, Wise, 
Eeverdy Johnson, Everett, Prentiss, Thompson 
of Indiana, and a host of lesser lights. But the 
immense multitudes gathered at the meetings 
came to be amused, not to be instructed. They 



American Presidents 137 

met, not to think and deliberate, but to laugh 
and shout and sing.'' 

Some of the speakers did attempt to discuss 
serious matters in a serious way, but it was diffi- 
cult, if not impossible, to do so in the midst of 
such surroundings. A Whig speech of 1840 to 
be in harmony with its setting should read about 
as follows: ** Fellow citizens: We are gath- 
ered together on a memorable occasion. We are 
surrounded by the revered emblems of our na- 
tionality. The flag of our country floats over 
our heads, the cider from our orchards flows at 
our feet, and the log cabin with its door covered 
with coon skins stares us in the face. The Whig 
party presents to you a candidate who stands 
as the living embodiment of these national em- 
blems. We hold that any man who spent his 
boyhood days in an American log cabin is fit to 
grace the White House at Washington. We 
also hold that any man who has sipped the cider 
from our hillsides is abundantly able to quaff 
the champagne of the presidential mansion ; and 
this after all, fellow citizens, is the main duty 
of our chief executive. It is also no small 
recommendation, my friends, that the Whig can- 
didate is able to skin a coon with neatness and 



138 Ameiican Presidents 

dispatch and to nail the pelt, well stretched, to 
his lowly cabin door. As it has been said by 
some one, if you allow me to write the songs of 
the nation, I care not who makes the laws, so 
I say, if you allow me to skin the coons of the 
nation I care not who formulates her statutes. 
I am aware of the fact, fellow citizens, that the 
chief executive of this nation is sometimes 
called upon to appoint a cabinet, to give his 
sanction to legislation, to negotiate a treaty, or 
to direct the movements of the army or navy, 
but I prefer in my remarks to-day to say noth- 
ing of these things, but to confine myself to 
essentials. It is upon this platform, fellow citi- 
zens, that the Whig party makes its appeal for 
the suffrage of a sovereign and enlightened 
people. ' ' 

The most effective campaign orator of this 
period was Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, better 
known as **Tom" Corwin. Indeed it would be 
difficult to imagine a combination of talents bet- 
ter adapted to campaign speaking than were 
those of Corwin. The testimony of men who 
knew and heard him repeatedly is all to this 
effect. Hugh McCulloch in his Men and Meas- 
ures of half a Century says of Corwin: **Men 



American Presidents 139 

would travel twenty or thirty miles to listen to 
the matchless orator, and even his political op- 
ponents could not help joining in the applause 
which his speeches never failed to call forth. 
It was worth a Sabbath day's journey to hear 
* Tom ' Corwin tell a story. ... He had always 
something good to say, and he never failed to 
be instructive as well as fascinating. His 
power over popular and promiscuous assem- 
blies was immense. Plain farmers would not 
only travel long distances to hear him, but they 
would stand for hours under a burning sun or 
in a pelting rain, seemingly oblivious of every- 
thing but the speeches by which their attention 
was absorbed.'' 

Corwin 's oratory attracted attention in Con- 
gress as well as upon the stump. He was a 
member of the House of Kepresentatives in 
1840, during the Harrison campaign, and added 
to his laurels by a memorable speech made in 
reply to General Crary of Michigan. General 
Crary had criticised the military tactics of Gen- 
eral Harrison, and particularly his generalship 
in the Battle of Tippecanoe. This put Corwin 
on his mettle. He took the floor and made an 
inimitable speech, of which Mr. McCuUoch 



140 American Presidents 

speaks as follows: **In Ms off-hand reply to 
this speech Mr. Corwin gave free rein to the 
style in which he surpassed all men of his day. 
While he did not fail to vindicate Harrison's 
military capacity, as displayed in the battle, by 
apt references to the action of soldiers of ac- 
knowledged merit in somewhat similar circum- 
stances, he overwhelmed his assailant with ridi- 
cule by showing what his opportunities had 
been for learning how battles should be fought. 
General Crary was a military general on a 
peace establishment. Taking advantage of this 
fact, Mr. Corwin described in his inimitable 
manner a Michigan militia parade with General 
Crary as the commanding figure; the troops in 
motion with hoes, axe-handles, and other deadly 
implements of war overshadowing the field ; the 
general with his gaudy epaulets gleaming in the 
sun, mounted upon a crop-eared, bushy-tailed 
mare, fourteen hands high, riding gallantly in 
front, displaying the beauty of his steed and 
his superior horsemanship ; and when the par- 
ade was over satisfying the thirst which his 
glorious labor has created with watermelons 
which he slashed with his mighty sword and 
shared with his heroic men. I recollect no 



American Presidents 141 

speech so provocative of hearty laughter as 
this speech of Mr. Corwin. His exaggerated 
but somewhat truthful description of a military 
parade (general-training, it was called) in the 
early days of the West, in the conduct of which 
General Crary was supposed to have acquired 
the knowledge that fitted him to criticise Gen- 
eral Harrison's military character, was so ab- 
solutely funny that the House was convulsed 
with merriment, and Democrats as well as 
Whigs shouted as he went on until they were 
hoarse. To such a speech there could be no an- 
swer. General Crary subsided. He was never 
heard again in the House or in public in Michi- 
gan. * Slain by Corwin,' was the return of 
the inquest over his political remains. ' ' 

The campaign of 1848 exemplifies another pe- 
culiarity in our campaign methods. In that 
year the Whigs nominated General Taylor for 
the presidency upon the strength of his record 
in the Mexican War. Taylor at the time was 
not a Whig. He had never allied himself with 
any political party. In fact he had never voted. 
In addition to this he was such a novice in poli- 
tics and statesmanship that even those who 
were most active in promoting his candidacy 



142 American Presidents 

smiled at his guilelessness. His views on civil 
affairs were unknown. Indeed it is fairly cer- 
tain, in the light of subsequent developments, 
that he had no clearly defined views ; yet he was 
preferred for the nomination to such men as 
McLean, Clayton, Clay, and Webster, and was 
moreover triumphantly elected. He was a 
great military hero and no questions were 
asked about his qualifications for the presi- 
dency ; — an amiable weakness on the part of the 
American people which, it will be remembered, 
James Kussell Lowell roundly satirized in the 
Bigelow Papers, Lowell puts General Taylor's 
answers to certain questions in the quaint Yan- 
kee dialect of Hosea Bigelow *'an up-country 
farmer." 

The absurdity of the whole situation must 
have impressed the thoughtful men of the day. 
It is not at all likely that the campaign of 1848 
could be repeated with success at the present 
time. 

The main purpose of the preceding sketch is 
to show that the evolution of our campaign 
methods during the last century and a quarter 
presents some encouraging features. While 
the methods employed in some of the more re- 



American Presidents 143 

cent political campaigns can hardly be called 
refined, they were, on the whole, an improve- 
ment upon those in vogue before the Civil War. 
The attitude of public men towards one an- 
other has been more fair and generous than in 
the days of John Quincy Adams and Andrew 
Jackson. There are, of course, some excep- 
tions to this rule which will readily occur to 
the reader's mind. The most marked excep- 
tion of recent years is to be found in the cam- 
paign of 1912, and more particularly in that 
part of it involving the two leading candidates 
for the Kepublican nomination. On the whole, 
however, the political discussions of recent 
years have centered around principles rather 
than men. 

The attitude of the press, too, shows a marked 
improvement. The rabid party organ is disap- 
pearing, and the tendency is for the really great 
and influential dailies of the country to become 
independent in politics. From the standpoint 
of truth and fair-dealing in political discussion 
the journalism of to-day still leaves much to 
be desired, and yet it marks a distinct advance 
over the journalism of a generation ago. 

Again, the political fortunes of men are no 



144 American Presidents 

longer made or unmade by mere incidents. 
Non-essentials are no longer as influential as 
they once were. Torch-lights, log-cabins, coon 
skins, hard cider, umbrellas, canes, bandannas, 
high hats, fence rails, watermelons, dinner 
pails and blue jeans are no longer the deciding- 
factors in American political campaigns. 
Neither are the people likely to be carried away 
by catch-words, such as *' Tippecanoe and Tyler 
too,'' **Rum, Romanism and Rebellion," ** 54-40 
or fight,'' and ^^The Full Dinner Pail." One 
President rode triumphantly into office upon 
the euphonious couplet: 

** Hurrah for Polk and Annexation, 
Down with Clay and high Taxation," 

but it is not at all likely that another could be 
elected in a similar way. 

While, on the whole, then, it would appear 
that the methods of the American political cam- 
paign have greatly improved in recent years it 
must be admitted that the campaign of 1912 had 
many regrettable features. There was a 
marked dip in the curve of progress ; such, how- 
ever, is the way in which civilization makes its 
advances. 



American Presidents 145 

In the first place, there was never a more bit- 
ter contest for the presidential nomination than 
the one between President Taft and Mr. Eoose- 
velt in 1912. Mr. Roosevelt, with his charac- 
teristic determination and tremendous energy, 
^'carried the war into Africa," and the Presi- 
dent, apparently, felt compelled to adopt a sim- 
ilar kind of warfare. During the campaign, 
both before and after the Chicago Convention, 
the President did many things which must have 
been exceedingly distasteful to him. A cam- 
paign mapped out by ** practical" politicians 
will inevitably contain many features which can- 
not commend themselves to a man of dignity 
and self-respect. A President of the United 
States, hurrying from city to city and from 
state to state, soliciting votes from the platform 
of a passenger coach, is not an edifying specta- 
cle. The White House should be the official 
residence of the chief executive and not his 
political headquarters. The President's Secre- 
tary, whose salary is paid out of the public 
funds, should give his time and energy to the 
affairs of government rather than to the politi- 
cal interests of his chief. Presidents, Vice- 
Presidents, Cabinet members, Speakers, Sena- 



146 American Presidents 

tors, Eepresentatives, and State Governors, 
should be compelled by public opinion, if not by 
their own sense of the proprieties of the case, 
to give their first and best efforts to the duties 
of their respective offices rather than to a pur- 
suit of the presidency. 

A fitting degree of dignity can never attach to 
the presidency of the United States so long as 
that office is made the object of a general scram- 
ble. The campaign of 1912, and more particu- 
larly the campaign for the Eepublican nomi- 
nation, humiliated us in the eyes of European 
critics. Never in recent years has there been 
such a regrettable campaign, and it is the part 
of wisdom, now that it is all over, to profit by 
the experience thus gained. 

There are some indications that we are going 
to do this. During the last campaign, Presi- 
dent Wilson gave evidence of a high conception 
of the proprieties of politics, and since his in- 
auguration has conducted himself in a most 
dignified and becoming manner. Then, too, 
public opinion is aroused upon this matter as 
never before in recent years. The attempt to 
amend the Constitution so as to provide for a 
single term of six years for the President is one 



American Presidents 147 

of the concrete results of this awakened senti- 
ment. I sincerely hope that the attempt will 
succeed, but that the amendment will not be 
made to apply to any man who has already held 
the office. Even if the attempt should fail, its 
effect upon public opinion would be consider- 
able and salutary. 

A few other changes would also be helpful. 
If national nominating conventions are to con- 
tinue to exist, they should be revised and recon- 
structed on a more equitable and truly repre- 
sentative basis. Sections of the country giving 
little or no support to a political party should 
have slight representation in the national coun- 
cils of that party. The powers of the National 
Committee should also be reviewed. A body of 
men elected to-day as the result of more or less 
political manipulation should not be able, by 
means of technicalities of procedure, to thwart 
the wishes of a majority of the party four years 
hence. Then again, definite and thorough-going 
presidential preference primary laws should be 
passed in all the States and the primaries for 
all parties should be held on the same day and 
under exacting restrictions. All of these things 
would tend toward greater dignity and equity in 



148 American Presidents 

our campaign methods, and the campaign of 
1912 will have served a good purpose if it aids 
in the consummation of these reforms. The 
campaign of 1916 has also taught us, I hope, 
that no party can succeed, however worthy and 
able its candidate, which does not put forth a 
definite and a constructive program. A cam- 
paign based largely on destructive criticism is 
not attractive. It is out of date and not in har- 
mony with present day progress and ideals. 
The time will come also when the word ** avail- 
able" will lose its peculiar and technical mean- 
ing. A noted American publicist is said to 
have remarked to his friends who urged him 
to become a candidate for the presidency, ** Gen- 
tlemen, let there be no mistake. I should make 
a good President, but a very bad candidate." 
This differentiation between the candidate and 
the President will not always obtain. 



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